Found a Soul on the Bathroom Floor
by truhekili
Summary: Post Season 6 Finale. Some very minor spoilers through episode 7.03, but also diverges from the show's events this season. Alex/April with Alex/Meredith/Cristina Friendship. Characters owned/copy righted by ABC studios.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: Prompted by Waltzmathilda's "The Sound of Your Sorrow Comes."_

"Move and I'll gut you," Cristina snapped, struggling to steady her hands. The antiseptic would burn, and the metal would pierce, and blood would flow, but he'd damn well better stay still.

"Just do it," Alex hissed, gritting his teeth as her gloved fingers dug into his flesh, pulling the skin taut as she moved to retrieve the steel shell.

"You're lucky this isn't infected," she chastised, almost half truthfully, because angry red lines already streaked the bruising along his torso.

"Hold still," Meredith insisted, pressing down on him as he half turned to glare back at Cristina. This was unauthorized, and the room was un-sterile, and it was entirely unwise, and they all knew better. But he needed to have it done in private, and Cristina needed her hands to stop trembling whenever she picked up a blade, and Meredith needed them to be Alex and Cristina again, and she couldn't have that while Cristina was reading home décor magazines and Alex was toting a bullet into her home every evening.

"Damn it, stop," Cristina muttered, forcing her eyes to focus and her fingers to bend as she paused millimeters from the bullet's entry point. He hadn't squirmed, but his chest moved lightly under her trembling fingers with each breath, and the glint of the blade caught the light, and it was all too much metal, and the blood roared in her ears, and her stomach poured into her shoes, and they weren't in an OR room, weren't in that OR room, but it felt like that whenever she fingered a ten blade, or smelled antiseptic.

"Cristina," Meredith called, eying her closely, and she should have stopped her, but she didn't, and she should have gotten help for them, but she couldn't, and she should have shoved him right off the gurney. But it was already too late, and she shouldn't have listened to his agonized gasp, or watched Cristina's tears as she collapsed against the wall, bullet firmly clasped in surgical tongs, and she shouldn't have pressed the gauze so tightly to the bleeding, as if stopping it would put an end to whatever this was.

"I got it," he grumbled, pushing her hand away as he sat half up abruptly, still dizzy from the pain killers and nauseous from the antibiotics.

"Down," Meredith snapped, pushing him back too hard, dislodging the gauze as his blood trickled through her gloved fingers. He was pale and shivering and probably inches from hurling, and she grabbed the antiseptic, dousing his side again before he could protest the burn and grabbing more gauze and taping it roughly in place.

"Hack," Alex muttered, his breathing still ragged, a vague smirk directed at Cristina, as she stood unsteadily, the bullet clutched in her bloodied gloves.

"Stupid, Evil Spawn," she retorted, holding it inches from his face. "It was your stupid idea to keep it in," she added more smugly, fingering it closely.

"Crack whore," he mumbled, his eyes fluttering as the second round of pain killers slammed into him. His ragged breathing steadied, as did theirs, and they were lucky they hadn't been caught yet, and they still had to get him somewhere where no one would notice, even at 10 p.m.

Checking the dark corridors carefully, they half walked, half shoved him to the nearest on call room, relieved that it was empty, and that the grape vine had apparently missed this unwieldy threesome. Settling him onto the bed, they threw a blanket over him, as Meredith sat on the floor, exhaling heavily and running her hands through her hair.

"I should go home to my husband," Cristina announced, smirking as she sat across from Meredith. The words tumbled out, shattering on the floor like a broken glass.

"You should," Meredith agreed, narrowing her eyes, and they both knew she meant no such thing.

Cristina stood quickly, checked Alex's breathing, and sat back down again, adding ill advised marriages to the list of things she'd never admit they had in common.

"I'll stay," Meredith noted, sighing and leaning her head back against the bed frame.

"We have to hide him," Cristina noted suddenly, because it was Friday evening, and Bailey wasn't letting him back in on surgeries until the bullet had been removed, and her and Meredith hadn't been cleared at all yet, and she already had her idiot interns' cutting party on her record, and it wasn't like the whole place wasn't enough on edge already.

Meredith nodded, staring blankly ahead. They had to hide him, because now he wouldn't be the invincible guy with the bullet in his chest and the big story; he'd be the guy who gasped when you cut into him, and avoided elevators, and went wobbly when you stuffed him with pain killers, and queasy when you loaded him with antibiotics.

"We need to get him out of here," Meredith announced abruptly, after a long silence. They all needed to get out of there.

"Right," Cristina snorted, motioning to Alex. They'd begged, borrowed and damn near stolen enough meds to drug him into oblivion; their next step had been hazy at best.

"I'll stay," Meredith repeated finally. "You're not involved." She'd cover for Cristina; she'd cover for Alex; she'd answer the questions; she'd concoct a story; she'd have to, really, since she was too tired to remember who'd done what, or when she'd stopped lying awake at night, listening to Derek breathe, or when day and night had still come in a regular pattern, back before whatever this was.

"I did it," Cristina countered, shaking her head as she stood. "I'm hungry," she added, as she moved toward the door,

Crawling into the bottom bunk across the room, Meredith stared at the mattress hovering above her, a wave of thoughts washing through her mind until the door opened abruptly, harsh lights from the early day shift flooding the room, as Bailey hovered in the doorway.

Looking sharply over at Meredith, she moved to Alex, and sat beside him.

Meredith watched her warily, as Bailey brushed her fingers lightly over his hair, mumbling something – a curse, or a prayer, Meredith couldn't quite tell – and it was all a bewildering blur, as tears streaked Bailey's face and her hands trembled and she wasn't Bailey any more then he was Alex or Cristina was Cristina and Meredith wondered again why the Hospital only left a memorial for the dead.

"You get it out?" Bailey snapped suddenly, staring abruptly at Meredith, who just froze, staring back wide eyed.

"Did you get that thing out of him?" she demanded more forcefully.

Meredith nodded hesitantly, as Bailey's words cut through her; she couldn't quite remember whose idea it was, but stupid was the order the day. She stared at the floor, her head swimming, until the door opened again, as April's wide eyed, startled stare met them amid the light pouring in from the hall.

"Take him home," Bailey insisted, her voice a low rumble as she glared at them. "You all go home," she added hoarsely, her rough voice shaking as she rose to her feet.

* * *

April found him on the bathroom floor at 2 a.m. Aspirin: she was just looking for aspirin, after Meredith tore out of the house, off to the police station again, and Cristina had fallen asleep on the couch, and the first kitchen drawer that she'd reached into left her with a handful of condoms, and the dull throbbing in her skull played tricks on her eyes in the darkened hallway, and she almost stepped on him as her sight adjusted to the dim light.

He was wet, and hazy, and shivering slightly and she tried to look away from him, and from the still soapy swath of chest that Cristina had dug into. She wondered if he was looking for his bullet, or still trying to wash away the blood, or if maybe Dr. Yang had just removed the one thing that had been holding everything else in for him, and if maybe that was why he was dripping, as he stared blankly at the cabinet under the sink.

Grabbing the aspirin bottle and a glass she sat cross legged across from him, avoiding his glassy eyes. She couldn't look, because he'd already seen the ghost that was following her, had seen Reed's ghost being born – in a bloody puddle in a darkened supply closet – and seeing it in him would just conjure her up in this house, too, and she was pretty sure that Meredith Grey's house was already haunted enough for all of them.

She couldn't tell him the rest, either, that she thought maybe Reed had held his hand- in the elevator – that Reed was like that, once she liked you, that Reed was bold, and brave, and wouldn't have left him alone, that Reed wouldn't have run away if he needed her; she couldn't tell him that sometimes she figured Reed had watched over him, until they found him; she couldn't tell him that sometimes she figured Reed saved his life.

* * *

His hands didn't shake. They held rock steady, even as another shiver rippled through him, even as April stared at him – or at anything but him – even as cold porcelain dug into his back. He didn't get it – the bathroom floor thing. They'd all come here before, Mere and Yang and Iz – he was sure he'd feel Iz there, somewhere – but she was gone, and his hands held steady. They'd always held steady.

He'd done it for Bailey – the bullet – done it because her voice shook whenever she talked to him about it, done it because of that freaking look in her eyes, done it because no matter what they said, his hands were rock solid. Yang's shook now; even Bailey's shook sometimes, but his held steady, even if he damn near hurled at the thought of an elevator, even if he was shivering on a bathroom floor while another wild eyed chick was staring at him with a bottle of pills clutched in her hand, even if the fucking shrink would be slipping more appointment cards into his hands – they wouldn't shake.

"Slipped," Alex rasped, groping blearily for his clothes and still unsteady as Meredith hauled him up and dragged him down the hallway. She rolled her eyes, and snickered at April's gasp, as the young woman trailed her to his room, averting her eyes.

She only had sisters, Meredith knew, and she'd obviously never lived in a frat house; she'd never done a lot of things, apparently.

Depositing Alex in his bed, Meredith bundled two blankets hastily around him, then ran one finger lightly along the still swollen scab. She'd hated him keeping the bullet in, and was relieved it was gone now. But she got it: It had plugged the hole Izzie left in him. It probably even hurt less.

"Chicks like it," he murmured smugly, his breathing ragged as drifted off.

"We do, huh?" she smirked, shaking her head again as his eyes fluttered lazily. There'd been no chicks since the shootings; but she didn't count it as a lie, since he needed to believe there were.

"Oh, yeah," he muttered.

"McDreamy still in jail?" Cristina groused, popping her head abruptly into the room and sizing up the scene. It was nearly 5 a.m., and Owen was still on call, and there were rules – new rules, now, but rules nonetheless.

"Yup," Meredith answered angrily, stepping away and following Cristina back out into the hall, where April hovered in the shadows like a spooked ghost.

"I bought you ice cream," Meredith called tiredly to April, as she watched Cristina retreat into her bed room. She'd stopped on the way home, at the open all night post catastrophe grocer. She got Tequila for Cristina, and chocolate milk and cereal for Alex, and double fudge crunch ice cream for April.

"Thank you," April peeped finally, her voice trembling as she ran her fingers through her frizzy hair.

"He'll be okay," Meredith said quietly, following April's quick glance toward Alex's door. "I got him Coco Puffs," she added wryly, meeting April's timid smirk as they both retreated into the darkness.

* * *

April alphabetized the cereal boxes over the next few weeks, and lined up rows of vitamin bottles by country of origin, and wrote affirmations in her journal and posted chore lists that nobody followed and read the newspaper while he polished off his Frankenberries, ignoring the fruit she shyly pushed in his direction. It was always bad news – her horoscope – and she really should stop worrying about mud slides in Asia and currency fluctuations in the futures market and genetically engineered Tuna and whether Cristina would ever stop turning up at 3 a.m. with Tequila and nachos.

She could organize the pots and pans instead, and put all the forks facing in the right direction, and iron all the cloth napkins, and sort all the recyclable paper by size and color. She could keep busy, while Meredith argued with Dr. Shepherd, and Cristina clung to anyone awake in the middle of the night, and Alex ran, and lifted weights, and drank, and – she suspected – always put the cereal boxes in the wrong slots just to annoy her.

She was fine, too, she decided, and it just made sense, now, to stop off at an unfamiliar church in the middle of a summer day, and light a candle for Reed – the self-proclaimed Heathen Extraordinaire – and gaze up at the stained glass windows, like she had as a kid during Sunday School, back when she still believed in souls and angels and… all of it.

* * *

Izzie baked; Yang chugged; Mere screwed; April organized. They were all just different species of Chick crazy, he imagined, though he drew the line when she started arranging all the fruit according – he suspected - to their Latin scientific names. They were surgeons, not botanists, and the vitamin thing was total overkill, and curtains couldn't possibly need to be washed every week and all the recycling went in together just fine on the truck.

None of it mattered at work, though, and everyone was under-staffed, and Hunt was an ass but trauma was trauma, and he wasn't going to be the guy who shied away from the gun shot wounds and the stabbings and the car accidents that kept coming, and the Chief could think whatever he freaking wanted, but he wasn't afraid of elevators, either.

He wasn't, he made sure of that, and he wasn't one of those people who looked twice at supply closets, and his hands didn't shake – they could bring it on, the sirens and the screaming and the blood and the adrenaline rush and he wasn't going to be the one who ended up on the shrink's shit list, since he'd had enough of every body's crazy.

* * *

Meredith told it to Cristina straight the following month: She'd married Owen for better or worse. She hadn't added that she was half sure Owen was the worse – or that Derek's asinine speeding was giving Owen's idiocy a run for his money. She didn't need to add that the "worse" part could curl innocently in a test tube or a blood sample, or sprawl across building plans to a house that she might get lost in someday, like Ellis had.

She didn't add that marriage was forever, either, at least, not with Alex in ear shot, and she didn't add that forever could be shorter then she'd ever imagined, and she didn't add that buying a fire house when your own life had just gone up in flames was beyond dark and twisty, and she didn't add that Dr. Wyatt could probably help Alex with his on-going fear of elevators, and Cristina with her sudden fear of scalpels.

* * *

April didn't go to church anymore, hadn't since she was a kid, her occasional visits now – bordering on weekly – notwithstanding. It was as good an explanation as any for why she'd help to cause so much carnage: maybe God was mad at her. Maybe being a doctor wasn't enough, even if her parents were proud of her, and her sisters were finally jealous of her for a change, at least, until…until…until the frantic news reports.

She was doing great, though, she assured them: she lived in a beautiful old house now, with her new friends. She was too busy to return all their phone calls, but she thought of them always, she promised, and would be home for Christmas like always. She couldn't wait to sample her mother's pecan pie, like always, she insisted, and to go shopping with her sisters, like always, and to ice skate at the rink on 4th and Main, like always, and to go to their old high school's rivalry basketball game on the twenty second, like always.

She'd even send Reed's family a card, she assured her mother, and possibly a plant, and that whole conversation echoed in her ears as she joined them all for lunch again. She listened to them squabbling like she had with her sisters, until two pagers beeped; then listened to Meredith complain about how Cristina wouldn't go near an OR, and about how Alex was throwing himself into trauma to prove who knew what to who knew who, and about how her husband was obsessed with the relative merits of slate vs. granite tile.

Meredith never mentioned the baby she didn't have, and April noticed that that seemed to be how they all dealt – by grumbling about how everyone else dealt – so she just noted in passing that Cristina still ignored pages sometimes, too, and that Alex used to seem less jittery and stressed when he was on Peads instead, and that slate tile is lower maintenance then granite and that her husband had a display of kitchen cabinet fronts in his office, too.

* * *

He wonders why Bailey is still nagging at him - since he'd gotten rid of the freaking bullet months ago, and he imagines that maybe Hunt is just dogging him because he's pissed about Yang and he figures that people stare furtively at him while he works because they like blood and carnage and its all just medical rubber necking.

He forces himself to chart after his latest shift, runs his eyes over the procedures he did in the ER, before passing his latest patient along to Cardio. He reminds himself that that's what trauma is all about – quick assessments and stopping the bleeding and patching things up as best you could, by any means necessary – before the specialists come in to do the more intricate, but less hardcore, definitely less hardcore, surgeries that followed.

He answers his phone after his shift, and its become a running joke with him and Aaron, about the flesh wound he snagged in a hospital, and Amber has more teen age crap going on then he could possibly keep track of, and they all lie to his mother – as usual – since crazy is unpredictable and the pills are still working and that's all that matters.

The pills are still working, he reminds himself, exhaling slightly, since Bailey's hands still shake and Yang's wheels have come off completely and Mere's a mess over idiot McDreamy and the maybe baby and April spends hours scribbling chick crap into fancy spiral journals and he's starting to think crazy just comes with the X chromosome.

* * *

"Not those," Meredith corrected, a few weeks later, replacing one identical cereal box with another in the shopping cart while April looked at her, baffled. "That one has the toy truck," Meredith pointed out, indicating the colorful box now sitting in the cart with a brisk nod while moving on to the Produce section.

It was technically April's turn on the chore list, but they'd driven in together that morning, and Meredith wanted to pick up more Tequila for Cristina, anyway, since she was now seeing Wyatt daily, and was almost back in the OR, but was still married to Owen, and spreading free range angst through the house like a wild fire.

She added apples and bananas to the cart, too, because April has been after them for weeks to eat more fruit, but keept buying plums, which Alex hated, and pineapple, which Cristina scowled at, and kiwi, which – seriously, seriously? - and she rolled her eyes at the over stuffed display of home decorating magazines, sure that Derek would up-date her on the latest in dishwasher technology and shower heads the moment they got home.

* * *

She gets an e-mail from her youngest sister in mid October, while she's filling in the last of her charts for the afternoon. It's only been two months, but her sister already loves college, and has two or three new best friends, and has gone on a hay ride, and changed her major three times, and decided she's going to Paris in the spring of her junior year.

April just shakes her head, because she could have gone to Paris, too, or Spain, or even Iceland, if she hadn't been too scared to leave Ohio; she could have gone on hay rides, if she hadn't been too shy to make friends with any one but her lab partners; she could have considered different majors, if she hadn't been paranoid about getting into med school; she could have had a great time in college, if she hadn't been, well…her.

She's in the pit already when she's paged, along with the whole rest of the staff as far as she can tell, as an endless caravan of ambulances roll in, and she hears shouts and cries and muttering about an early ice storm and a fourteen car pile up on the freeway. Her first two patients are DOA, and she frantically follows Alex's vaguely panicked and clipped instructions as a twelve year old bleeds to death right under their fingers.

Gloves get changed, and a chaos of shouts and beeps and gurneys slamming and demands for more gauze surround her and they lose another patient but manage to salvage three more and she's still shaking behind the curtain nearly an hour later when she hears Dr. Hunt furiously chewing Alex out for using a ten gauge on a twelve year old, as if the boy hadn't already been too far gone before they'd ever extricated him from the car, as if they could have done anything more, or better, or different, as if a smaller needle could have penetrated so much swelling, as if they could've revived the dead, if they'd just picked a different entry way, or a smaller needle, or given him ten more cc's of potassium.

She drives home with him later that night, and she knows better then to say that Hunt was wrong, or that there was nothing else he could have done.

Two days later she wanders into the church she still visits, on any day but Sunday, and she knows better then to ask why – about the freak ice storm in October, about the twelve year old who never had a chance, about the people left behind – and she lights another candle as the afternoon sun filters silently in through the stained glass windows, and she reminds herself that her family is proud of her…for saving lives.

* * *

He needs beer. Screw the freaking chore wheel; it's been another week in Hunt's sights, and he needs beer. He tosses a twelve pack of Mer's yogurt in the grocery cart too, the kind with the stupid cows on the little plastic tubs, and cashews for Yang, since otherwise she'll leave a trail of pistachio shells behind her everywhere she goes, and a big box of laundry detergent because the chick offering sample packets can really work that skirt, and milk because April keeps bringing home boxes of Chocolate Sugar Pops, as if she's collecting every one of those little toy cars she leaves on the counter near the phone.

He grabs apples, too, while he's there, and tosses in a slab of Green Mint Ice Cream with Marshmallows, scowling at the carton with a grimace, and wondering vaguely if April checks her blood sugar after she devours it, since she's always fiddling with vitamin bottles and reading articles about nutrients and pointing out that French fries aren't vegetables, as if everyone they ate with didn't have a medical degree.

A bag of weeds went into the grocery bags too, along with some yellow stuff he'd seen her put in a salad once, and broccoli, because she talked about it like it was a miracle drug, and the paper towels with the bird houses, and the pink cup cakes at the register, because they weren't freaking rabbit food, and he drew the line completely at balsamic vinegar, because it was six bucks a bottle, and whatever you put on them, weeds were still weeds.

* * *

She'd trick or treated for ears once, the year that she brought her bag of mommy to the hospital, before washing Ellis down the scrub sink. It was the only trick or treating she remembered, and she imagined her own children – off in the dream house, miles and miles from the nearest neighborhood – and she almost envisioned them doing the same to her someday, washing her away, because she deprived them of a proper Halloween.

This occurs to her as she sorts through the cracked Christmas ornaments in the attic, and the broken lamps, and the old clothes, and the faded photos of relatives whose names she has already forgotten, and the antique dishes that had been her grandmothers.

"You should just get new stuff," Cristina announces matter-of-factly, surveying the stash with a scowl.

"Like the leather chairs," Meredith snickered, smirking as Cristina stuck her tongue out at her. They'd bought all new furniture, her and Owen, all new everything, and he'd insisted on two burnt orange recliners which looked vaguely like over stuffed pumpkins.

"We compromised," Cristina shrugged.

"I liked you better when you were impossible," Meredith muttered, because compromise and Cristina Yang never belonged in the same sentence, and she was back in the OR now, and still seeing Wyatt, and she was living full time at the fire house now, and it should all be falling into place. But there were still too many Tequila bottles in the recycling bin, and Cristina still wasn't a single minded Cardio Goddess, and Alex was still trying too hard to be something he wasn't, and the dream house was looming.

"Yeah," Cristina whispered reluctantly, as she poked through another box, "me, too."

* * *

April pulled the witches hat and cape off abruptly, ignoring Alex's expression as she dove back into her room. She hadn't expected anyone else to be home so early, hadn't expected anyone to see her in the hall way, and was sure they'd all hear about it, now.

She was dressing up his year, anyway, because she hadn't last year, because the kids coming to the door for the mountain of candy she'd bought would love it, because her younger sister had already been invited to two Halloween parties, and she was sure that her parents had already decked out their own home in full haunted mansion mode.

It had been awesome when she was eight, her parents' version of a haunted castle, complete with dry ice fog and spooky noises and giant spider webs galore; it had been mortifying when she was in high school, when basically everything embarrassed her; they swore she'd grow out of that someday; she was still waiting.

She was dressing up this year, though, because her and Reed had been invited to a party the year before, and she'd told Reed then that she had to work. She hadn't, but she'd been embarrassed by Reed's costume, and she knew Reed would get loud and rowdy at the party, and probably bring some guy home, and she knew that she'd have to talk to a bunch of new people that she'd probably never see again, anyway, and she knew, really, that she'd just stand there watching everyone else and hoping the party ended soon.

She'd dress up this year, though, and she laughed later that week, when her sister sent her a picture of her nieces in their costumes, and she called her parents to inquire about the haunted mansion – which really, was a town legend – and she flipped through a few old photos of her own, of her sisters gleefully preparing to go out trick or treating, while she hung back, sure that her hat wasn't pointy enough, or that her fangs weren't long enough, or that they'd all make fun of her.

She'd done enough of that though, she decided; she should have gone to the party with Reed, and they could all say what they wanted, but she was dressing up this year.

* * *

It was Bailey's favorite holiday; he remembered that from his intern years, her crowing happily as the annual chainsaw contest's competitors rolled into the ER. It was one of the busiest nights in the ER, too, and it pissed him off to no end that Hunt hadn't bothered to schedule him – again – during prime time.

Hunt was in on all that crap with Robbins, he imagined, about him going back to Peads; Hunt was in on it with Bailey, with the Chief, even, as if a few days hesitation with the elevators made him a freaking coward, as if he was some kind of freaking Dr. Seuss, as if he was all rainbows and fairy dust crap.

He pulls into the driveway later that afternoon, rolls his eyes at the cob webs and witches' cauldrons lining the walkway, and the sound activated Frankenstein that greets him at the front door, and pushes into his room, tossing his bag aside as he checks the clock for how long until Joe's will open. Not the best plan, he imagines, since he's just worked a sixteen hour shift, and he's not entirely sure all the cobwebs he saw downstairs were…there.

He imagines that the crazy roommate with the witch's outfit has something to do with it, and it reminds him about chicks and holidays and why he appreciates Mere's attitude towards them and his eyes are half shut as he sprawls across his bed when he notices the towering stack of clean laundry folded neatly on his dresser, and sorted – of course – by color and type – and he rolls his eyes again as he crawls off his bed and he's absolutely, positively not dressing up no matter what any of them say.

* * *

"Trick or treat?" Cristina snickered, watching Alex struggle to hang a giant, dangling purple spider from the porch roof, as Meredith followed her up the walkway.

"Creepy costume, Yang," he retorted, breathing heavily and awkwardly adjusting his footing as the spider rustled all around him, while Cristina scowled up at him.

"You're off tonight, too?" Meredith asked, studying his hands as he set the rope in place.

"Thanks to Hunt," he grumbled, yanking the twine to make sure it held.

"He thinks you're a hack," Cristina pointed out, scanning the porch. "Is there candy?"

"Buckets of it," Meredith assured her, pointing her in the general direction of the roaring Frankenstein lurking in the entry foyer.

"He's an ass," Alex muttered, climbing down from the ladder and checking out his work.

"Have you talked to Bailey?" she asked quietly. He had to eventually, she was sure, because he never had these problems in peads, and they'd be applying for fellowships soon, and everyone but him knew he was in the wrong field, and she was sick of not recognizing her family members, and really, he was hanging up a giant fuzzy spider on Halloween afternoon, which wasn't rainbows and fairy dust, but still…seriously?

"No," he said hesitantly, in a way that sounded much more like "not yet," and she knew better then to push the matter any further, and she knew it would be a few more weeks before he could make enough of a mess on Owen's service that he'd have no choice but to move back to Robbins, and she knew that there was no easier way, or at least, no better ego sparing way, and she wondered sometimes how the Y chromosome survived long enough to replicate itself, considering how freaking stubborn and unreasonable it was.

"Giant fuzzy Spiders?" she teased, almost giggling as his face reddened. "Was that on the chore wheel?"

"Shut up," he grumbled, grabbing the ladder and following her into the house.

* * *

"This is stupid," Cristina insisted two weeks later, waving a chip at the television. It was 3 a.m. again, and Mer and McDreamy were upstairs "trying" again, and it was Nachos and Tequila on the couch again, while endless sports news flickered in the darkness.

"Why are you here again?" Alex grumbled, grabbing a nacho and sinking back into his seat.

"Because you're so charming," Cristina snickered. "And I'm celebrating," she added smugly, swigging directly from her Tequila bottle. "I aced that valve replacement," she announced grandly, as if she'd just won a Harper Avery.

It had been her first solo surgery, since she'd been cleared; her first high risk procedure, since she'd… since she'd… since she'd finally forced her hands to steady. Not that Mama Hunt would care about that, she was sure; not that she'd care about anything but how the fire house was decorated, and how her and Owen would celebrate the holidays, as if she gave a crap about Christmas or Hanukah or whatever the hell else they called it – the end of year excuse to over eat and over drink and generally make a fool of yourself.

"Owen still thinks you're a hack," she added.

"He's an ass," Alex snorted, grabbing another chip and tossing her the remote. It'd taken a few weeks, but he'd finally worn Hunt down, pissed him off terminally, drove him bug eyed and fuming as he demanded that the Chief himself remove Alex from his service. It'd been worth it, worth every second, just to see Hunt crack first.

"He's a bad ass trauma surgeon," Cristina corrected, eying Alex dismissively. "You're the stork."

"If he's so bad ass, why are you here?" Alex taunted, rolling his eyes. It wasn't actually a question; they'd had this exchange before, over pizza once, when the Nacho place closed early; over turkey subs once, a few weeks back; even over hot dogs the week before, when an ill advised re-heating experiment left the microwave coated with salsa.

"I thought he'd bail," Cristina said quietly, after a long silence. "That's what guys do, right?" she snorted bitterly. She wasn't sure really, if she'd expected that, or simply wanted it; she wasn't sure about a lot of things these days.

Alex smirked at her, sipping his beer. He could have pointed out that she'd run away again, that her husband was probably wondering where she was, and what had happened to her, and what the hell he'd done wrong this time; but then there'd be snarking about Izzie, and taunts about tuxes, and reminders that he'd been shot and damn near died, and his ex-whatever still hadn't even called.

"Right," Alex retorted, glaring back at the television.

"Why is he still here?" she demanded, and she wasn't sure, entirely, if she was shocked that he'd stayed, or angry that he'd proposed, or flat pissed that she'd agreed, or terrified about the fire house, or regretful about it all, or if the Nachos just weren't agreeing with her that night, or if maybe they were interfering with her Tequila absorption.

"Dude asked you to marry him," he retorted, rolling his eyes. "Where else would he be?"

"Sometimes they don't mean it," she snapped, angrily grabbing the bottle again.

"Burke didn't," she muttered fiercely, after a stony silence. The name burned her tongue, still, and she reminded herself fiercely that she hadn't needed him, that she hadn't needed any man, that she didn't need Owen, that she wasn't one of those pathetic women who went weak in the knees when a guy with a few too many beers in him started babbling about wanting forty years – as if he even knew he had that many years to promise.

"He wouldn't have asked if he didn't," Alex grumbled back, and he didn't specify which "he" he meant and he just glared back at the television again.

She continued to drink in silence, and chomped furiously on another round of Nachos, and restlessly fingered the remote, rolling her eyes when a familiar ruckus erupted from upstairs. "Those two should get a room," she snickered, clutching her bottle tightly as she sank further into the couch, raising her eyebrows toward Meredith and Derek's bedroom.

"Tell me about it," he grumbled, blinking and working to stay awake as he gazed bleary eyed at the television.

"You don't have to baby sit me, you know," she snapped, almost slurring as the Tequila finally started to percolate through her veins, with a familiar warm burn. "Unless you're like, practicing for your new "specialty" or something," she snorted sarcastically.

"Shut up," he muttered, closing his eyes briefly as he leaned back into the seat cushion.

"I'm glad you didn't die," she said quietly, fingering her drink as she gazed absently at the floor, glassy eyed and definitely feeling the warm burn now.

"Huh?" he said sleepily, glancing up, puzzled.

"I mean, for Mer's sake," she added quickly. "You're still a hack."

"Crack whore," he mumbled, sinking further back into the couch.

"Oh, yeah," she agreed, nodding smugly and finishing off her bottle in one huge gulp.

* * *

She missed fall in Ohio, missed the golden orange leaves, and the crisp, clear evenings, free of Seattle's drab mists and grey drizzles, and she wondered what her family was doing for Thanksgiving, since she spent the day in the Pit, listening to Hunt yelling at Alex again, while Alex just growled and grumbled and tuned him out entirely.

She could have mentioned that he always seemed to get along better with Dr. Robbins, and even Bailey, and that he always just seemed happier in peds – well, as happy as Alex could get, anyway – but she was drifting herself, behind in Neuro, struggling in Cardio, repelled by Plastics, or maybe just by Sloan, and just not fitting anywhere, as usual.

She could ignore his latest page, tell him she's just had it with the Pit, too, as an over-worked ER nurse hands her a scan and asks for confirmation of a diagnosis and trails her to the OR, where Shadow Shepherd lets her first assist on an aneurysm, and Shadow Shepherd doesn't intimidate the hell out of her, and he praises her deft movements, and she watches the intricate web of blood vessels settle back into place, and she remembers why she wanted to go Neuro in the first place.

She could thank Alex for sending her the case later, she imagines, since she'd been complaining for weeks at lunch, and she was sure he had a hand in it. But that's really not him, even on Thanksgiving, and he's fine with re-heated Turkey and football replays after work, and she hadn't been sure, anyway, to be thankful this year – since it wasn't her, or to feel guilty, because it had been Reed instead.

Reed was never one for guilt, though, and she wasn't much for flowery words, either, and thanks could come in many forms – she'd seen that on Oprah once, too – and she settled on tickets to a basketball game, instead.

* * *

He'd never trusted Hunt, anyway, he reminded himself; not that he trusted Robbins either, he'd never trust terminally perky, anymore then he'd trust terminally ticked off Hunt. But at least Robbins didn't hover, not over the actual surgeries, anyway, and she could squawk all she wanted about the idiot parents, but they weren't his patients, and the freaking scrub nurses could ooh and aah at him all they wanted when he scooped up his latest preemie, but working with tiny blood vessels was way more hard core then patching and duct taping and calling in the real specialists, like Hunt did.

Bailey could chortle, too, for all he cared, because she was another X chromosome, under the Nazi exterior, and they all had their issues, and he just gnawed on his pop corn at the basketball game the following week, while April screamed her head off like a raving loon, and vegetables and vitamins inexplicably gave way to cotton candy and hotdogs, and he reminded himself never to trust a chick jumping madly up out of her seat with every basket and waving a giant foam finger around, either.


	2. Chapter 2

Maine at Christmas was beautiful, Meredith was sure; grand old colonial houses, snowy horse paths and towering pines; the stuff of Norman Rockwell paintings. It made her vaguely nauseous, and she stared baffled at the toy catalog, reviewing in her mind how many nieces and nephews were involved, and which ones still believed in Santa Claus, and how she could get it all drop shipped in time for Christmas Eve, two weeks away.

They could have stayed home, she reminded herself. But Cristina was going to be with Owen's family, and Alex had volunteered to work, and April was going home to Ohio, and she'd finally run out of excuses, and she'd have to learn how to do it anyway, the whole Christmas thing, or her kids would grow up dark and twisty, and bad mouth her on day time talk shows, while she languished in a far flung nursing home.

"Hey, cool," Alex said, dropping into a seat at the table and spying the vast selection of Lego sets.

"Which one would you want if you were eleven and also liked video games?" she asked tiredly, scanning down her list.

"The castle," he said eagerly, as if it was perfectly obvious. "Look at that draw bridge, and the catapult," he added.

"Eight and also like comic books?" she prodded, quickly taking notes.

"Bat lair," he nodded approvingly. "With the speed boat," he added bluntly. "They're sold separately."

"You sound like the Cartoon Network," she giggled. "Seven and a circus freak?"

"Ferris wheel," he said flatly, pouring over the description. "It's motorized and has three speeds. It needs people," he added, "and batteries."

"Of course," Meredith muttered, imagining her own future Christmas mornings, a chaotic brew of missing pieces and spilled juice and Ferris wheels with no passengers and weak batteries. Not that it would be anything like that with Derek's nieces and nephews, of course; with them it would be neatly dressed children and a full gourmet breakfast and a professional photographer and the inevitable golden retriever puppies spilling out of hand knit Christmas stockings hung neatly on vast fireplaces.

"You freaking?" he asked bluntly, gnawing on his cup cake.

"I'm preparing," she corrected smugly.

"Just bring extra batteries," he nodded seriously, standing and scouring the room for another cup cake. "They'll love you," he added, shrugging casually as he grabbed his milk glass and returned to his cartoon marathon in the living room.

"Right," Meredith agreed, exhaling under her breath, and noting to order a castle for Alex, too, - with people to put in the catapult.

* * *

Three kids die on his and Robbins' service, on the Tuesday before Christmas. He disappears half way through his shift, and Meredith pages April. They both know where he is, and they both know there's nothing to say, and April goes anyway, because really, what else could she do, and she just sits quietly across from him until he looks up again and manages to steady his hands.

"I hate this," he mutters finally, and that pretty much says it all.

"I know," she says softly, her eyes vaguely scanning the darkened supply closet as silence settles over them again, since that pretty much says it all, too.

She leaves two days later, and her parents pick her up at the airport, as usual, and they all gather for Christmas, as usual, and she goes to church with them, as usual, and she lights a candle, as usual, and she pictures Reed perched atop the huge tree in the church atrium, laughing mischievously, and the season is supposed to be all about peace and love and joy and forgiveness, but she can't forgive Reed's death, and peace is a distant memory, and she's sure her family loves her, but joy is tenuous at best.

She finds the same clothes under the tree, as usual – all perfectly her – and the same DVDs – just her taste – and the same books – a biography of a famous female doctor, a few cheesy romance novels, courtesy of her sister, a picture book of flowers – and they all know her inside and out. She doesn't recognize herself ay longer, though, and she's vaguely shocked at the face that stares back at her in the fogged over window on the plane ride back to Seattle, and she wonders if Reed ever felt that way, too.

The house is empty and almost dark when she arrives home, and she imagines that Meredith and Dr. Shepherd are still in Maine, and that Alex is at the hospital, and she almost calls her sister, again, - though she can't quite tell if that's because she misses them already, or misses who she was, but doesn't seem to be any longer, despite their best efforts – and she almost sits on the rumpled package dropped casually on her bed.

She imagines its from Meredith, but it has no label, and she giggles as she notices the basketball on the writing journal's cover, and she wonders as she flips it open if he watches Oprah, too – not that he'd ever admit that – and she wonders, as she pulls out her favorite pen, if he'd even bothered to re-heat the broccoli she'd left for him, stashed right along side the chocolate milk and the cup cakes, where he'd be sure to see it.

* * *

Meredith called Cristina from Maine, to hear all about Momma Hunt, who just made her miss Momma Burke. She called Alex, too, who was already halfway through building his Lego castle, and had already tried the catapult – naturally. She almost called April, but April's family was probably posing for a Norman Rockwell painting, too.

Not that that would be happening in Maine this year, she finally admitted, since the wild nieces and nephews had all but wrecked the house, and Derek's sisters bickered endlessly about Turkey timers and pie fillings and whose surgical specialty was the most vital, and Momma Shepherd just herded everybody to the table as if chaos was perfectly normal.

It occurred to her then that the woman had raised five children, five, and they squabbled a lot like Cristina and Alex, and refereeing them she could handle, and the table cloth had stains on it that would have driven April mad but didn't seem to bother Derek's mother at all and one of the cakes came flat and it didn't snow – it rained – and Norman Rockwell would have run screaming from such a mad house but everyone else seemed happy enough and she doubted any of the kids would be scarred for life, even after the scraggly dog threw up on the rug in the den and this… yeah, this she could manage.

* * *

April returned to the hospital on a silvery grey morning and she worked with Shadow Shepherd again and she'd already decided that she was Neuro all the way and she didn't stammer when he asked her to take the lead – that was one of the resolutions she'd written down in her journal – and she told her sister she was going to dye her hair, maybe, or buy a new jacket, and she went to Joe's on New Years Eve, and she almost danced with a stranger, but she couldn't quite go through with it.

She left instead, ran away like she always did, and returned to find Meredith and Dr. Shepherd's luggage in the hallway, and bottles and glasses on the kitchen table, and a few garish, glittery party hats, probably from the plane, emblazoned with Happy New Year. And it would be, she'd decided weeks ago; it had to be, because she'd gotten a second chance, they all had.

She'd waited too long already, and it didn't matter if he was fully awake or even sober and it didn't matter that he looked vaguely bewildered when she crawled into his bed and it didn't matter that she had no idea what she was doing, since she was sure he would, and it didn't matter that she was shaking and somewhat dizzy and it didn't matter that it was nothing like what she'd imagined and it all just exploded within her, again and again and again, and it didn't matter that she was still quivering and breathless afterward, and it didn't matter how his warm skin rippled against her, and it didn't matter that his soft moans gave way to even quieter deep, steady breathing.

It was time, she insisted, that's all it was – she was running out time, and she wasn't going to be like Reed, who ran out of time entirely – and she wasn't going to be the girl standing in the shadows at the parties anymore and she wasn't going to be the thirty year old virgin everybody made fun of anymore and she just wasn't going to be the girl who averted her eyes and startled at condoms in cookie jars and shook when a stranger asked her to dance and she wasn't going to be the girl whose big dreams only ever happened in the pages of her journals.

Another soft sigh escaped him and his breath brushed her shoulder and she frantically pulled back her hands and his body was a bewildering geometry of lines and planes and angles, of warm muscle and smooth skin and scratchy stubble and she'd never gotten any further then this even in her fantasies and her flesh was still trembling and her ears were still ringing and she pulled the blankets abruptly with her as she dove for the floor to retrieve her clothes and she hastily bundled them around him again as she rushed to the door, desperately hoping that no one saw her as she hurtled down the steps.

* * *

"Morning," Meredith noted the next day, glancing up from the newspaper spread across the kitchen table as Alex bounced into the room from the stairs. "April still upstairs?" she asked, eying him cautiously as he dumped a pile of cereal into his bowl.

"Didn't see her," he replied briskly, grabbing the comics. And he hadn't. She was gone when he woke up, and it wasn't like he hadn't expected it. He knew better then to trust a squirrelly chick with a monkey on her back.

"Right," Meredith agreed. She was fairly sure he'd seen all of her the night before, judging from the racket coming from his room. "Anything going on with her?" she prodded reluctantly, deliberately avoiding his eyes.

"How would I know?" he growled. And he wouldn't, because she was crazy, chicks were crazy, and he'd had enough crazy for a dozen life times, and the last thing he needed was to baby sit a thirty year old virgin with a freaking chore wheel.

"She's just seemed a little out of sorts, lately," Meredith added hesitantly, which could have been true, if she knew April better, or maybe, if she'd known her before – before she tripped over her best friend's dead body, before she landed in a puddle of Reed's blood, before she started down a crazed gun man in a hospital corridor.

"How could you tell?" he snorted, finishing his cereal and rinsing out his bowl. It wasn't like Yang was back to being Yang, anyway, and it wasn't like Bailey wasn't still freaked, and it wasn't like the nurses weren't still all paranoid about the supply room, and it wasn't like giant purple spiders and the humming she did when she thought no one was listening and her frantic yelling at the television during basket ball games and the way she talked to the birds when she filled the feeder were signs of mental health, either.

"I just thought she might have said something to you," Meredith added reluctantly.

"No," he insisted. "Going for a run," he added, and was out the door before she could look up again.

"Of course you are," she agreed, muttering under her breath.

* * *

April had the same feelings at work the next morning – she was still flushed red and her limbs were still trembling and her flesh was still quivering and she could still feel his breath on her shoulder and the ripple of his body against hers and he was everywhere – curling all around her and throbbing inside of her – and she glanced nervously around every corner, even down in the Pit, just to avoid him.

She was avoiding all of them and she was sure everyone could take one look at her and know what had happened and she was sure they'd all laugh at her again and she was sure that Meredith and Dr. Shepherd and maybe even Cristina had all heard her, heard them, and she wondered frantically how long she could get by in scrubs and on call rooms and if any one would notice if she just lived in the hospital for a while.

"April," Meredith called finally, tracking her down, and she glanced up startled and panicked and trapped and she would have run if Meredith hadn't been blocking the path out of the supply closet. "I've been looking for you," Meredith said casually, as April sank back against a row of shelves, desperately wishing she could disappear beneath the stock pile of paper towels and rubber gloves.

"I… I've been busy," April stammered, shuffling her feet.

"I'll say," Meredith agreed, almost giggling despite the awkwardness.

"You…you… you heard…" April cringed "…..us?"

"It's a hoar house," Meredith shrugged. "We're all used to it."

"I'm not," April muttered miserably, staring at her shoes as she sank to the floor.

"I know," Meredith said quietly, sitting cross legged next to her.

"I wanted to get it over with," she said, shrugging uncomfortably. "You know, new year, new me," she added glumly, rolling her eyes.

"So you don't like Alex?" Meredith asked, confused. "He was just…there?"

"I like Alex," April said shyly, a sheepish grin spreading across her face. "But I'm…me. And he's…" she continued, her voice trailing off into a frown.

"I know," Meredith agreed quietly. She could already hear Cristina chortling about Evil Spawn deflowering Strawberry Shortcake: Yeah, no, definitely not what they'd expect. "He might surprise you," she pointed out hopefully, "if you say something to him."

"I ran away," April said finally, frowning. "I can't even look at him."

"You've already seen him," Meredith teased, trying to lighten her mood.

"Not funny," April smirked, a wry smile flashing across her face.

"You… used something, right?" Meredith asked suddenly, remembering who she was talking to.

"Like… costumes?" April gasped, wide eyed again.

"Like a condom," Meredith corrected, shaking her head and grimacing at the thought.

"Oh," April said quickly. "I've been taking birth control pills since college. I… I never thought it would take this long," she pointed out, her face reddening again.

"Was it that bad?" Meredith asked quizzically. She remembered her first time vaguely; she wouldn't have bothered again, she thought with a smirk, if it hadn't gotten better. At least Alex knew what he was doing.

"No," April said after a long silence, as another shy smile spread across her face. "It was… it was…" she stammered, groping for words again as her face reddened.

"I know," Meredith agreed, nodding as she stood and pulling April up with her.

* * *

He was barely half wake by the time her clothes followed his to the floor again later that night, and whatever he might have meant to say faded into her trembling fingers as she touched them to his lips. "I'm neurotic," April admitted, her voice quavering, "and I hate confrontation, and I…and I panicked," she stammered finally.

"No kidding," he grumbled, squirming despite himself as her hands trailed along his body.

"I like things planned out, and organized, and I…I didn't want…I didn't think you'd… I thought everybody would… I thought you would…" she sputtered nervously.

"Okay," he agreed, inhaling sharply as her hands paused on his chest.

"I hate when you put the cereal boxes in the cabinet in the wrong order," she blurted out suddenly, "and I can't stand crumbs in the sink."

"I know," he smirked, his own hands sliding around her as she continued to tremble.

"I like you anyway," she added, squeezing her eyes shut and looking away. "It wasn't just…just…you know…I…I like you anyway."

"The birds think you talk too much," he pointed out, "when you fill up their feeder."

"I only do that when I'm nervous," she protested, her face reddening.

"I know," he smirked, pulling her closer.

"You're not as scary as you think, you know," she insisted, her voice shaking again as she fought the impulse to squirm from his grasp.

"I'm not huh?" he smirked, sliding his hands more slowly along her body.

"You play with Legos," she retorted, sighing despite her best efforts, "and the toys from the cereal boxes."

"Working on my manual dexterity," he grumbled smugly, a faint smile tugging at his lips as she moaned, struggling to make as little noise as possible.

"Liar," she accused, her voice still wavering as her own fingers traced tentatively down along his torso, lightly brushing his thighs.

"Not scary, huh?" he frowned, eying her closely.

"No," she insisted, trying to sound more certain then she felt. "Good?" she whispered finally, wide eyed and almost trembling again as he stiffened beneath her fingers.

"Good," he muttered, quivering and exhaling heavily as her hands picked up speed.

"Good," she repeated, a shy smile teasing her lips as a shuddering groan rippled through him. "Good," she whispered again, nodding bright eyed as he slid leisurely into her, and her limbs closed reflexively around him, and she could feel him ripple right through her, again and again and again, and she could feel smooth muscle and warm skin settle around her again, and she just held her breath this time, until her familiar vague terrors blended into his soft snores, and her breathing settled into rhythm with his, and she wondered as she drifted off to sleep, if her hands were in the right places, and if it was normal for guys to basically purr when you stroked them like that, and if this was why the on call rooms at SGMWH were always so loud, and so busy, and if this was why Meredith's cookie jar was always full of condoms.

* * *

"He bought me freaking flowers," Cristina grumbled, scowling as she dug into her salad.

"It's Valentine's Day," Meredith replied flatly, pulling another chocolate candy from her box as she read through a journal article.

"I'm allergic," Cristina noted, rolling her eyes incredulously. "Boys are stupid. Why are you so stupid?" she demanded, grabbing the potato chips from Alex's tray.

"Chicks made it a stupid fake holiday," he retorted, gnawing on his green apple.

"So, you're not doing anything for April?" Cristina taunted, leaning in more closely to him and batting her eyes dramatically.

"No," he said flatly, grabbing some of his potato chips back.

"He's taking her to a basketball game," Meredith added, not even looking up from her article as she ate her yogurt. "It's very romantic," she giggled.

"At least it's practical," Cristina complained, sitting back in her seat. "Why even waste money on freaking weeds?"

"Dead weeds," Alex added, nodding his agreement. "And it's not my fault that the Cavs are in town on the 14th," he insisted, shaking his head.

"Oh," Cristina teased, "so you didn't get the whole Valentine's Day special? Beer and pop corn by candle light, with a cheering mob of rowdy drunks?"

"No," Alex snorted, rolling his eyes as he rooted through Meredith's candy. "Do all of these have pecans?" he scowled, grimacing as he bit into another piece.

"Only the square ones," she retorted, swatting his hand away. "Don't put that back."

"He could have picked chocolate," Cristina added, shaking her head incredulously as she dug into Meredith's box, too. "Or nachos, what's wrong with nachos?"

"Not romantic," Meredith replied, shaking her head.

"Or tequila," Cristina said. "Why not Tequila?"

"You're already easy," Alex snorted, biting hopefully into a rectangular candy, and nodding approvingly.

"Could be dangerous with the fire pole," Meredith observed, flipping to the next page of her article.

"Stupid, stupid holiday," Cristina grumbled, devouring the rest of Alex's potato chips.

"Seriously," Meredith agreed, nodding in unison with them as reached around Alex's hand and retrieved a caramel crunch.

* * *

"You're smiling," Meredith teased two months later, glancing up from the newspaper as she watched Alex hastily shove the recycling into two bins.

"Huh?" he asked, looking up quickly.

"Your face," she pointed out, reaching for her coffee mug. "It's turning up all crinkly like. Normal people call that a smile."

"Funny," he grumbled, rooting through the cabinet for more garbage bags. He wasn't smiling; he knew better, because they all went crazy, eventually, and he knew better then to trust any chick who'd wait thirty years just to give it up because of a few stupid party hats and a freaking glittery dance ball dropping from a metal post into a mob of drunks.

"She likes you, you know," Meredith added, wrinkling her nose at him.

"She's OCD," he pointed out, waving his hand vaguely over her vitamin supply and the chore list spreadsheets on the counter, with recycling detail high lighted in bright orange marker. He knew better then to trust any chick with a traveling pharmacy, too.

"And loud in bed," Meredith smirked, almost giggling.

"You should talk," he snickered. "And shouldn't you be "trying" now?"

"Right," Meredith agreed sarcastically. That was certainly Derek's view. Never mind that they'd be moving into the dream house soon, and they still hadn't agreed about getting the genetic tests, and she'd never get the attic packed, and she hated the tile he picked for the master bath, and they'd never agree on baby names, and the whole dream house thing just seemed to be tempting fate, as if they hadn't had enough close calls already.

"I'm not freaking," she insisted, glancing back up at him a moment later, when she realized he was still watching her. "It could happen again," she added quietly.

"I know," he agreed, shoving another garbage bag into the basket.

"It's not like this is a great time for it, either," she added, standing abruptly and pouring more coffee into her almost full cup. "Our Fellowship applications are due soon," she reminded him seriously. "The drive way isn't even poured, yet," she noted quietly, as if that had any thing to do with babies or miscarriages or pushy post-it husbands.

"You're freaking," he noted bluntly, scanning the chore list again as he tied the next bag closed.

"You're sorting garbage," she retorted, adding the milk she never used to her coffee. He was almost following the chore list, sort of, she'd noticed a few weeks before. And he'd stopped grumbling about torturing Hunt, and he'd stopped insisting that peads was 'just temporary,' and sometimes he'd almost smirked back at the four year old they'd worked with together the week before, the little boy with the brain tumor, and a choice stash of toy cars, and Meredith imagined he was already in deeper then he'd notice for months.

"Gets me laid," he smirked. "What's your excuse."

"You really like her," Meredith announced, narrowing her eyes, and almost laughing as he scowled back at her, his face reddening as his eyes nearly crossed completely.

"You're still freaking," he noted, pointing out the sugar she was heaping into her cup.

"What if I'm not ready?" she asked quietly, staring at the kitchen floor. She could have meant about any of it: the dream house, the move, the Fellowship applications.

"The parents in peads are never ready," he shrugged, leaning back against the counter and staring at the floor. "It sucks. They deal."

"What if the kid's like me?" she prodded.

"A freak-er?" he smirked. "Count on it."

"Shut up," she objected, trying not to laugh. "What if the kid's-"

"OCD?" he interrupted, holding up one of April's alphabetized vitamin bottles with a baffled frown.

"An Evil Spawn," she retorted, smirking at him again.

"Tell him never to trust crazy chicks," Alex replied.

"You love us," Meredith teased, giggling again as he rolled his eyes, before grabbing the bags and hauling them out the back door.

* * *

"She can't be that bad," Meredith insisted that June, poking at her salad as Cristina glared cross eyed at her.

"She'll want us to have like fifty freaking kids," Cristina insisted, stabbing her pudding angrily as she pictured Mama Hunt's smiling face, and warmly decorated home, with the mantle and the piano and the wide, built in shelves, all awaiting pictures of grubby little grand children dribbling ice cream down their chins.

"Better get started," Alex snickered, digging into his plate.

"Shut up," Cristina snapped. "And since when do you eat peas?" she demanded. "Where are the French fires? I need French fires."

"Peas are healthy," Meredith corrected, glancing sharply at Cristina.

"Oh," Cristina taunted. "I get it. The girl friend won't let him eat-"

"Get your own freaking French fries for a change," he grumbled, scowling back down at the vegetable platter in front of him.

"You're whipped," Cristina announced, snickering at him again. "He's so whipped," she repeated to Meredith, waving her hand at him.

"You're the one popping out a litter," he snorted, glaring back at her.

"Not me, no way," she insisted, smiling smugly. "I'm not whipped."

"So what are you going to tell Hunt's mother?" he taunted. "That kids run screaming from you?"

"I'll borrow a kid," Cristina announced. "Mere, you'll lend me your kid sometimes, right? I'll just say it's mine."

"I'm not even pregnant, yet," Meredith pointed out. "Maybe Alex could pick one up for you in peads," she added, rolling her eyes.

"It'll cost you," Alex grumbled, picking at his food again.

"Oh, like what?" Meredith and Cristina retorted, both rolling their eyes again.

"French fries," he growled, rising abruptly from his seat and stalking back to the lunch counter.

"He's so whipped," Cristina laughed, grabbing the rest of his peas and eagerly awaiting the arrival of his French fries.

"Seriously," Meredith agreed, shaking her head as he crossed back to their table, happily toting a large plate and an extra bottle of ketchup, since Cristina could generally polish off one whole bottle herself, on half an order of Fries.

* * *

"How's she doing?" Meredith asked, somewhere in mid August, dropping into the seat beside Alex in the surgical observatory. Shadow Shepherd was letting April solo on a tumor removal that morning, and she imagined she'd find Alex there.

"Good," Alex said, nodding absently as his fingers drummed a patient chart.

"You're nervous," she teased, almost giggling.

"It's an interesting surgery," he corrected, frowning at her.

"Since when do you even like Neuro?" she scoffed, leaning back in her chair.

"Peads surgeons remove tumors, too," he pointed out, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Right," she agreed, watching the slight smile flit across his face as April glanced up at them. He was scared to death, she knew, to do any more then that, to show any more then that; to trust any further then that; to tempt fate any more then that. She knew the feeling well, knew the feeling too well, every time she pulled out another pregnancy test kit.

Sometimes, she wondered if Derek would ever get it, too; sometimes she wondered if she wanted that for him; sometimes, she wondered if that would even be their choice.

"She's good," Meredith noted quietly, a few minutes later, as she listened to the faint echoes of Shadow Shepherd praising her work.

"Yeah," Alex agreed, nodding quickly. "She just needs to see that," he added flatly.

"Derek says Shadow Shepherd is actually a pretty good teacher," Meredith replied. "She seems a lot more confident, now," she added, watching them work.

"Maybe she just had to find what she liked," Alex said, still fingering the chart he held.

"Like peads?" she teased, glancing back over quickly, to catch another flicker of a faint smile, before he rolled his eyes.

"You're good, too, you know," she added quietly, reaching for her pager as it buzzed.

"Yeah," he smirked, glancing back down at his hands.

"I wasn't talking about peads," she added softly, walking away to answer her page.

* * *

"You're cooking for Evil Spawn?" Cristina asked, sometime toward the end of September, scowling as she followed Meredith into the kitchen.

"What?" April asked, startled. "No, I'm just…trying one of my mom's recipes."

"Since when do you eat pancakes?" Meredith asked, peering curiously into the mixing bowl. Not that she was complaining, but April was generally a health food fanatic, and prone to nagging about vegetables and pro-biotics and macro-nutrients.

"I just thought I'd try something new," April added sheepishly, watching as Meredith and Cristina surveyed her work.

"He hates pecans," Cristina announced abruptly, snatching up the bag on the counter. "You should use chocolate chips instead."

"I'm not making them for Alex," April insisted, her face reddening. "I just-"

"Uh-huh," Cristina said, nodding and ignoring her protests entirely, as she retrieved a bottle of water from the refrigerator. "He likes muffins, too," Cristina added, grabbing a glass, "and cinnamon buns, the more icing the better."

"But I'm not-" April protested again.

"Isn't he still at the hospital, anyway?" Cristina asked, directing her attention to Meredith instead. "Those will get cold before he's home."

"I'm not-" April started again.

"But hey," Cristina added, grabbing the bag again and heading toward the living room, "the microwave doesn't smell like salsa anymore. He could probably re-heat them."

"I'm not making them for him," April objected again, after Cristina left the room.

"No, huh?" Meredith asked, grabbing a glass herself and rooting through the refrigerator.

"Not really," she said, shrugging as she poked a spoon into her batter. "I just thought it'd be nice to… if I…-"

"April," Meredith said quietly. "This is nice," she said hesitantly, surveying the room. "But he's not used to this, either," she said finally. "It's… too soon."

"Like, he'll think I'm a crazy stalker or something?" she asked, suddenly wide eyed.

"No," Meredith laughed, though that might not be too far from the truth, given his own well founded paranoia. "But Alex is…" she started, groping for the right words.

"It takes him a long time to trust someone, a very long time," she said carefully, after a lengthy silence. "You just need to be… patient. And this," she added, pointing around the room, "this might-".

"Scare him?" April filled in, almost incredulously.

"You just have to be patient," Meredith reassured her, still choosing her words very cautiously. "Maybe start with something… simpler. Something like… pop tarts," Meredith brightened suddenly, spying the open cabinet above the sink.

"These have a lot of MSG," she frowned, pulling down the box and glancing at the nutrition label, "and sodium."

"April," Meredith interrupted, eying her with a wry smile.

"I know," April agreed, sighing. "Stop being so up-tight."

"Stop trying so hard," Meredith corrected quietly. "He already likes you."

"I know," April replied, staring back at the floor again. "I just, sometimes I wonder if-

"He sorts the recycling," Meredith interrupted, "and he eats peas, now. Trust me; he likes you."

* * *

"Just sign it," Cristina snapped the following month, grabbing some of the French Fries from Alex's plate.

"Cristina," Meredith protested, eying her sharply before turning back to Alex. "They're due by 4:00," she reminded him quietly.

"I know that," he snapped, glaring back at the application form in front of him.

"You can't do Trauma, anyway. Owen would never want you," Cristina pointed out. "Face it, Evil Spawn: You're doomed to the rug rat set."

"Cristina," Meredith hissed again, watching as Alex finally began filling in the last section. "Peads is very competitive," she insisted. "Even if it isn't brain surgery," she teased, giggling as he glared back up at her again.

"It's ankle biters and spit up," Cristina chortled, gathering up her tray and checking her pager. "I'm scrubbing in on a heart transplant this afternoon," she added smugly.

"See if they have an extra one for you," Alex noted, not looking up as he continued to scribble in the appropriate boxes.

"I'll see if we can salvage the donor's brain for you," Cristina retorted, picking up her tray as she walked away. "Not that you'll need it, being the Stork and all."

"You know, April put in to work with Shadow Shepherd," Meredith interrupted, before he could add anything as Cristina left.

"Yeah, I know," he said absently, continuing to write.

"She said you really helped her with her decision," Meredith added, still picking at her food. She'd seen him watch some of her surgeries, and she'd joined them at Joe's after wards, and it still vaguely baffled her that April in neuro made a bizarre kind of sense.

"I tossed her a few cases," he agreed, shrugging as he stuffed the papers into a large yellow envelope, "if something good came up in the Pit, or in Peads."

"She brags about you, you know," Meredith teased. "How good you are in Peads."

"That's some crazy chick thing," he grumbled, returning to his French fries. He didn't get it, the whole oohing and aahing over any guy who could pick up a baby without breaking it or dropping it on its head. Chicks digging the hero thing he got, and chicks digging gun shot wounds he got, but the whole, ooh he can hold a baby thing, he'd never get.

"Not that," Meredith corrected, shaking her head, sure she knew what he was thinking. "She thinks it's hard core," Meredith insisted. "She said she could never work with sick kids all day. I don't know that I could, either," she added, after a long silence.

"They deal," Alex shrugged. "Usually better then the parents," he added gruffly.

"Yeah," Meredith agreed absently, still playing with her fork. "I could see that."

"Are you-?" he asked suddenly, eying her closely.

"No," she said quickly, shaking her head. "Not yet," she added wryly. "But I think about it now, when I do Peads cases. I see brain tumors in six month olds and I think-"

"You know that's rare," he protested, "like, getting struck six times by lightening in a month rare."

"I know," she agreed reluctantly, and she didn't need to add that they were both the type of people who got struck by lightening six times in the same month, and she didn't need to add that dark and twisty was just their version of sane, and she didn't need to add that expecting the worst had pretty much always worked well for them anyway, as a predictor.

"The kid lived," he reminded her, slurping his soda.

"I know," she agreed quietly, and it was another in a series of vague miracles she'd witnessed over the past few years: that she'd survived, that Derek had survived, that Alex and Cristina had survived, that Cristina was decorating a fire house for her husband, and Alex was eating peas, occasionally, for a woman who adored him, and she was preparing to have a baby with a man she was sure would love her forever, split ends and all.

"We're good, you know," he said smugly. "In peads."

"For baby sitters," she teased, wrinkling her nose at him as she dropped her napkin back on her tray.

"I'm not baby sitting," he reminded her, gathering up their trays and his envelope as they made their way out of the lunch room. "I don't even like kids."

"April will baby sit for me," she taunted, squeezing his arm.

"Shut up," he growled, pushing the double doors open as they left the room.


	3. Chapter 3

April lay quietly beside him, watching the first silvery rays of an early November dawn seep in through his window, as he breathed softly into her shoulder. She still had that same feeling, as her fingers trailed over him, and she didn't startle nearly so much these days, when his silky flesh stiffened in her grasp, and she didn't pause, panicked, when a quiet moan rumbled through him and she didn't freeze when a drowsy smile tugged at his lips as his eyes fluttered open, and he curled lazily around her.

"Half an hour," Cristina announced abruptly, the bedroom door bursting open as she poked her head into the room.

April scrambled reflexively, burrowing under Alex as the dim light from the hallway flooded the room, and pulling him frantically around her like a makeshift robe.

"Nice ass, Evil Spawn," Cristina chortled. "Was this on the chore wheel?"

"Shouldn't you be putting out a fire?" Alex growled, not even bothering to move.

"Isn't that what you're doing?" she snickered. "And hurry up. We're leaving in half an hour," she added casually, laughing and walking away.

"Half an hour," he grumbled sleepily, grabbing April's hand and tugging her out of the bed and toward the door.

"What if they see us," she protested, flattening herself against the wall beside the door and pulling him with her, almost cowering as she hid behind him again.

"Pretty sure they already did," he smirked, tugging her with him again as he ran down the hall. She was still beet red as the shower steamed around them and still never sure what to do with the soap when he did that with his fingers and still never sure how much noise the rushing water actually drown out as she shuddered again and again and still unsure how she managed to get all the shampoo out of her hair before they were due to leave.

She followed him on another mad dash down the hall – making a mental note, again, to buy some bigger towels – and she was still beet read for an entirely different reason and her legs were still trembling and she still couldn't keep her eyes from wandering in his direction as he dressed and she still wondered what Reed would think about it all.

"You finished?" Cristina demanded moments later, as Alex poured down the steps and into the kitchen, followed by April, who was still straightening her hair. "That was fast," Cristina taunted, eying Alex smugly as April sheepishly studied the floor.

"Hunt not putting out?" Alex retorted, grabbing two pop tarts and his jacket.

"We have a fire pole," Cristina taunted, wiggling her eye brows suggestively as she shoved Alex out the door.

"Were we…too loud," April stammered, eying Meredith as she clutched her purse.

"Hoar house," Meredith reminded her, ushering her out the door as she locked it behind her. Whatever else worried her about having kids, supervising horny teenagers was the least of her concerns. That, she reminded herself, as she slid into her jeep, listening to Alex and Cristina squabble over fire poles and pop tarts, while April sat beside her fiddling with the radio – that, she could definitely handle.

* * *

"Don't get any ideas," Meredith warned, walking up behind Alex as he stood off to the side, watching the Christmas party milling around the Fire house. Cristina hated holidays, but sprigs of mistletoe hung everywhere – her or Owen's idea of a joke, apparently – as if the SGH crowd needed any amorous encouragement.

"Right," Alex snorted, swirling his drink as he glanced up at the wilting weeds.

"Shut up," she retorted, rolling her eyes as she slipped her arm through his. "Is April working?" she asked suddenly, scanning the room.

"Ohio," he answered quickly, shaking his head with a shrug.

"Oh," Meredith said hesitantly. "She went to…visit her family?"

"It's a tradition thing," he noted, shrugging again. That's what he heard her tell her mother, anyway, when she was making plans to leave. It was a family thing, apparently.

"So, you decided not to go?" she asked quietly, almost cringing, and almost sure he was imagining the same horrors she'd contemplated before her first trip to Maine.

"Wasn't invited," he said flatly, shrugging again.

Which was good, really, because he wouldn't have wanted to go, anyway, since he hated holidays; and it would have been lame, her and her perfect family; and this way he could get all the cool peads cases, since Robbins was away; and he could have some time to himself for a change, and not have to bother with vegetables or vitamins; and he wouldn't have to be surrounded by annoying people he didn't know, and goofy decorations he'd never understand, and flat, syrupy egg nog that would never top a cheap beer; plus he could watch all the basketball and football games he wanted to in peace.

"Oh," Meredith said quickly, eyeing him closely. "That's good, right? No need to make up excuses?"

"Yeah," he agreed, entirely too quickly. "I'm on call this week, anyway," he added quickly. "You know, with Robbins and Henderson gone and all."

"Right," Meredith repeated, nodding seriously, and fairly sure he didn't even realize how much he was lying.

* * *

She called him four times on Christmas day; he never picked up. He was working, she reminded herself, and probably busy; he might even be in surgery. He would have been miserable here anyway, she imagined, watching the swarm of aunts and uncles buzzing around her parents house. He hates crowds, she reminded herself, and holidays, and Christmas decorations, she added – cringing as she surveyed the explosion of red and green and tinsel that lit up her parents' great room.

He'd hate the noise, too, she recalled, as she listened to her sisters chatter excitedly about college and work and their annual after-Christmas shopping trip, and he'd never have wanted to ice skate with them, she reminded herself, as she laced up the old skates that stood waiting for her in the closet in her old bedroom, just like they did every year. He'd have thought the hand knit stockings above the fireplace were totally lame, too, and he'd have just scoffed and rolled his eyes at midnight mass, where they went every year, to light candles, and hear the usual sermon, about peace and joy and love and forgiveness.

She tried again to forgive this year: to forgive Reed's absence, to forgive the scar that still lingered beneath her fingers, whenever she ran her fingers across Alex's body. But she couldn't, and she was sure that would disappoint her parents, the parents who had always been so proud of her before; she imagined that a lot of things about her would disappoint them now, though, if they had any idea how much she'd changed; she wondered if they'd still recognize her, really, if she ever told them the truth.

She tried to call him once more before she went to sleep, but he still didn't pick up, and she was getting curious looks from her mother, and she just couldn't tell her about Alex exactly, anymore then she could tell either of them about Reed, and she wondered if he opened the present she left for him, and if he'd like it, or if a garage for organizing his Lego and cereal box cars would just seem like another chore.

* * *

"I'm sure you're exaggerating," Meredith insisted, a few days after Christmas.

"She's impossible," Cristina grumbled, complaining yet again about Owen's impossible mother. "She makes her own decorations," she grumbled, grimacing. "And she has three freaking trees up in her house. And she plays carols non stop while we're eating," she added, covering her ears dramatically and scowling again.

"Better or worse," Meredith repeated, shrugging as she shoved her coffee cup across the locker room table, making room for another patient chart.

"Easy for you to say," Cristina retorted. "You got off easy this year."

"I did," Meredith nodded smugly. Not that her first Christmas with Derek's family the year before had been awful, exactly, but she could do without annual celebrations.

"I should do what he does," Cristina grumbled, motioning to Alex, who was changing near his locker. "Embarrass Owen. Then he won't drag me there."

"Pretty sure you already do that," Alex snapped, grabbing his stethoscope and his lab coat and striding out of the room.

"What's his problem?" Cristina scowled, watching the door close behind him.

"Have you tried talking to him?" Meredith asked, ignoring her question.

"Alex?" Cristina asked, turning around, baffled.

"Owen," Meredith corrected, shaking her head. "Communication is the key to a good marriage, you know," she chirped, almost half seriously. "Tell him you don't want to go to his mother's for holidays."

"Have you talked to McDreamy?" Cristina snorted. "It's not like Maine is exactly your destination of choice."

"We don't have to talk," Meredith insisted, shaking her head. "We're trying," she added, rolling her eyes.

"That'll be next," Cristina groaned, lowering her head to the table.

"For better or for worse," Meredith repeated, flipping open the next chart.

* * *

"Hi, April," Meredith said, walking up behind her at the Nurses station two days later. "When did you get back?" she asked.

"Oh, Meredith, hi," April replied, fumbling with her chart.

"Are things okay with you?" Meredith asked, eying her closely again.

"Of course," April said quickly. "I'm just, I've been busy, you know." And she had been, she'd kept busy, since Alex more or less avoided her, burying himself in his work, and her mother phoned almost daily, sure something was wrong.

"Alex said you went to Ohio for Christmas," Meredith replied.

"Yeah," April said slowly. "My family, we do a lot of traditional stuff. Alex would've hated it," she added, almost defensively.

"I can imagine," Meredith agreed, nodding again. "I bet he made up some lame excuse for why he couldn't go," she added, eying her closely again.

"I wouldn't make him do that," April said quickly, shaking her head as she looked back down into one of her charts, her face reddening more under Meredith's silent gaze.

"I just, I figured, he wouldn't care, you know," she shrugged, "so I didn't ask him." She was a terrible liar, had always been a terrible liar, had never even tried to be a good one, and she was sure it couldn't be more obvious if she had the term tattooed on her forehead, and she wished Meredith would just go away so that she could think.

"Oh. So, you had a good time?" Meredith asked quietly.

"Yeah, great: It was great," April agreed, much too quickly. "We love the holidays."

"Oh. So, are you guys coming to Cristina's New Years party tomorrow, then?" Meredith asked.

"I-I can't-I mean, I'm working," she sputtered finally, which could have made sense as an excuse, theoretically, and which would have made perfect sense, if she hadn't avoided him since she'd returned, if she'd actually gone back to the house, instead of holing up in on call rooms, if she'd actually said anything to him before she'd left.

"That's too bad," Meredith said, pulling out her pager.

"Yeah," April whispered, watching her walk away.

She'd meant to say something, before she'd left; she'd meant to explain, or she would have, if she had any explanation herself; she meant to talk to him when she got back – not that he was much of a talker; she'd tried to call him on Christmas, and she'd left him a present, and it wasn't like she'd just ran off, or that he didn't know where she was, or what she was doing, at least… any more then she did.

She'd talk to him that night, she promised herself; she'd go home that night; and she'd explain it all; she'd go for a walk in the mall after her shift and clear her head, and maybe pick up some of that licorice he liked so much; she'd do something about it, finally; she'd tell him the truth; she'd do what she did the year before – stick to a resolution to change things – and she might even go to Cristina's party.

She repeated this to herself for the rest of the day, and she watched as the licorice was bagged, and she sipped her hot chocolate as she watched throngs of post holiday shoppers bustle through the mall, and she pulled into the drive way around six that evening, and she shrugged off her coat in the darkened kitchen, and she caught sight of the hastily scribbled note he'd left addressed to Mere, and her eyes blurred over as she read the last line, and she just dropped the licorice on the counter as her stomach sank into her shoes.

* * *

"Hey, mom," Alex muttered awkwardly, trapped in the doorway as her arms closed around him. It all looked the same: the little white farm house, the cramped living room with the faded green carpet and the plaid couch, the kitchen with the bright wallpaper and the small table and the rooster sugar holder. It all looked the same, and it all felt so alien, and he just shuffled his feet as another pair of green eyes rounded the corner from the hall, as Amber sized him up curiously, as if she wasn't entirely sure it was him, or wasn't entirely sure he was actually there, or wasn't entirely sure of anything.

"Alex?" she asked curiously, and her voice was too grown up in person, and she was entirely too tall, and a wave of auburn hair spilled over her right shoulder, and her face settled into a hardened frown that sucked the wind right out of him.

"Hey," he said finally, breaking the awkward silence. It was all the words he could think of, and he hadn't planned any further then getting here.

"Why are you here?" she asked abruptly, sidling closer to their mother.

It was a good question, and it rattled through him like a cold shiver. He'd told himself that there were always things you could do; he'd told himself that a lot since the shooting; he'd told himself that he should be dead, that it was point blank; that there's always something you can do, if you can survive something like that.

"He's come back to see us," his mother filled in, as if he'd just dropped by from across the street. "Come sit down," she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the table, and it was all familiar, the rambling conversation and the chatter about distant relatives, the reports about doctor's visits and the promises about the pills, the updates about the local church and the problems at the local high school, the bragging about how well Amber was doing, and how pretty she'd gotten.

He just watched uncomfortably, as Amber sighed and rolled her eyes, and the logic of always being able to do something rear ended reality again: the pill bottles on the table, which could only do so much to stave off the madness; the poverty that seeped into his bones all over again; the rage that sill soaked the walls, though his father was long gone; the throbbing reminder that no win situations were the universe's default option.

* * *

"Hey," Amber said hours later, tentatively hovering in the doorway of his old room, where he lay staring at the ceiling in the darkness.

He sat up abruptly, eying her closely, as she moved over to the dresser by the window, pushing a faded, dusty curtain aside and peering across the plains.

"It's like a museum," she noted wryly, glancing back into his old room, where a few old textbooks sat piled on a battered wooden desk, and a tangle of wrestling medals dangled from the closet door. "Mom likes it that way," she noted, looking back out the window again. "She still doesn't know," she added, fingering the curtains, again. "Aaron said that's best for her."

"Yeah," Alex agreed, nodding.

"Is that why you're here?" she asked suddenly. "Like some weird cheated death kind of thing?"

"Maybe," he smirked, shaking his head. He recognized the attitude, and the anger; he recognized all of it; it almost made his blood run cold all over again.

He didn't know, really. He'd do it again, maybe, run off their dad; he'd do anything to stop him, maybe; he'd had no choice, maybe; it'd been for the best, maybe; he'd done it to protect them; he'd done it to help them; he'd done worse to help them.

"She's better, you know, with the pills," Amber said, shifting from foot to foot as she leaned back against the wall. "Not great, but better."

"I know," Alex said. "Sometimes that's the best they can do."

"I know," Amber said quietly, exhaling and nervously picking at her fingers, another habit he recognized.

"Aaron says your friends call you the Stork," she said, after another awkward silence. "You're really a surgeon for babies?"

"Kids mostly," he smirked. "Sometimes babies."

"You save any this week?" she asked wryly.

"Two," he said flatly.

"What's that like?" she asked curiously.

"It's pretty cool," he admitted, smirking again.

"You don't have, like, some kind of hero complex, or something, do you?" she demanded abruptly.

"Where'd you get that from?" he snorted.

"Honors English," she said smugly. "You're not the only smart one, you know. I want to be a teacher someday," she added, staring at the floor again.

"I can help you some with Community College," Alex said finally. "But you'll still have to work. With mom's pills and my med school loans, I can't just-"

"I know," she said quickly. "Aaron said he could help some, too. And I can keep my job at Lawson's. They'll let me work part time and weekends."

"Have it all planned out, huh?" he asked.

"What?" she asked, looking at him curiously.

"Nothing," he shrugged quickly. "That's good. Plans are…good."

* * *

"How was your trip?" April asked, finally catching him in the deserted locker room, a day after he'd returned. "Did you talk to your sister?"

"Yeah," he said flatly, pulling his jacket from its hook.

"I got you some licorice," she said uncomfortably, her face flushing. "It's at the house."

"Uh-huh," he muttered, hanging his lab coat in his cubby.

"You're off now, right?" she asked, watching him shove some folders in his bag.

"Uh-huh," he nodded curtly, zipping it shut and standing quickly.

"Will you just talk to me?" she demanded finally, grabbing his arm and pulling him abruptly down onto the bench with a thud. "Or at least listen," she insisted, meeting his angry glare with a furious look of her own, and pulling him roughly down again when he tried to move.

"I know you're mad. I should have said something sooner," she rambled, tightening her grip on his sleeve.

"Whatever," he grumbled, moving to stand only to be yanked down again.

"No," she insisted vehemently, glaring at him again. "Meredith said… Meredith said you might think I didn't ask you because I was… because I was…" she stammered.

"Embarrassed," he filled in pointedly, scowling and pulling away from her.

"No," she insisted, shaking her head. "I didn't ask you because I didn't want to go either," she repeated, her voice trembling as she struggled to breathe.

"It's tradition," he reminded her sarcastically, untangling the strap on his bag. "And you love that holiday crap."

"Loved," she said, in a voice that stopped him cold.

"I loved it before… before,,," she indicated, in the shorthand they'd all learned to use to avoid mentioning that day. "But everything's different now. I'm different, now. I keep telling them I'm fine, that I'm still me," she added. "I don't want them to worry."

She struggled to catch her breath, again, almost laughing reflexively when she saw his bewildered, slightly guilty expression.

"I don't mean that," she corrected, shaking her head and wiping at her eyes. "I mean, I still miss her, you know, Reed. And I'm supposed to be able to forgive, but I can't; and I'm supposed to sit in that church like it's okay, but I just can't."

"I saw… I saw what happened to his wife… I was part of it," she said sadly. "And sometimes all I can think is, if I'd done something different, maybe Reed would still be here, snarking on holidays, and maybe you wouldn't have gotten shot, and maybe … maybe things would have been different," she shrugged.

"That's not your fault," Alex insisted, watching uncomfortably as she dragged a tattered tissue from her jacket pocket. "Sometimes…" he stammered.

"Crap happens," she filled in for him, smirking slightly despite the tears.

"Yeah," he shrugged, picking nervously at his fingers.

"I didn't want to go this year," she repeated softly. "I just didn't feel like doing all the same things again, when things are so different now," she added softly.

Alex nodded, staring uncomfortably at the floor. "I hate holidays, anyway" he grumbled finally.

"I know," she said quietly, wending her fingers awkwardly through his.

* * *

"This is ridiculous," Meredith complained that February, as she flipped through the catalogue spread on the kitchen table. It was supposed to a small gathering for their close friends. It was supposed to be simple, and casual; it wasn't supposed to be catered, and she was drawing the line at valet parking, or whatever else Derek might come up with.

"Huh?" Alex asked, looking up from the newspaper spread across the table.

"He wants me to pick stem ware for the house warming party," she grumbled, surveying page after page of elegant place settings.

"Stem ware?" Alex repeated, frowning.

"Over priced wine glasses," Meredith explained sarcastically. "Seriously? Who buys this stuff?" she demanded, flipping through the catalogue indifferently. "And stop that," she demanded abruptly, snatching the newspaper from him.

"We can find another place to rent," he grumbled. "We're not charity cases." They weren't, he reminded himself, even if his loans weren't going anywhere, and his mother's pills weren't getting any cheaper, and Amber would need help with Community College.

"It's not charity," Meredith snapped. "And April loves it here. She's already planted a freaking botanical garden in the yard, anyway."

"We can-" Alex started.

"No," Meredith snapped again, slamming the catalogue open again and glaring at the pages. "She keeps this place meticulously clean," she pointed out, which was true, since she was a neat freak. "You fix things. And I don't want to sell it. I want it to stay in the family. My mother would want it to stay in the family," she insisted.

"You know she's, like, not here anymore, right?" Alex asked, glancing at her.

"Of course I know that," Meredith retorted. Not that she believed it, exactly, since she could still feel Ellis, sometimes, and she was almost sure the attic was haunted, and she'd hated the place until it became a frat house, and it was home now in a way she'd never imagined, and she wasn't selling it, she wasn't, no matter how big the Dream House was.

"What about the stem ware?" he grumbled.

"What?" Meredith asked, looking up again, puzzled and frazzled now.

"Aren't you going to sell this place to-" he prodded.

"You can't be serious," Meredith replied, shaking her head. She still had Ellis' money, and Derek had his millions, and for all her fears about kids and tiles and stem ware and paved driveways and catered shrimp… poverty was the least of her worries.

"I'm not selling this place," she retorted more forcefully. "It's not charity. It's your home. You're my freaking family. You're staying. April's planting her freaking flowers. You're fixing things, and April's steam cleaning the bathroom every week because she wants it sterile enough to freaking operate in there or something," she sputtered. "And you need to help me pick some freaking stem wear," she demanded, glaring at him.

"Dude," Alex started, scowling down at the catalogue as he scanned the glossy display, and the price lists. "You know McDreamy's crazy, right?"

"Shut up," she snapped, grabbing her pen and scribbling in the order form.

* * *

"Nice little party," Cristina teased the following month, sipping her drink as she and Meredith surveyed the crowd, which had grown to over two hundred, once Derek tweaked the guest list.

"Even though we don't have a fire pole?" Meredith asked, rolling her eyes as she smoothed out her dress. The casual part hadn't lasted either, and she still preferred Cristina's party, which featured drunken revelers sliding down the pole, and a raucous darts match between Owen, Alex and Mark, which nearly drew blood, and two cuts which subsequently stitches, provided by Cristina – to break in her new kitchen.

"It's a nice place," Cristina said, shrugging as she surveyed the house, with the two story foyer and the sweeping views of the bay through the gleaming floor to ceiling windows and the towering fireplace and the giant great room with gleaming hardwood floors.

"Better booze," Meredith added, giggling as she glanced at Cristina's glass.

"Are you the designated driver?" Cristina smirked, watching as Meredith sipped her club soda.

"I'm pregnant," Meredith whispered, squeezing her eyes shut and exhaling heavily.

"You are?" Cristina replied, wide eyed. "Does McDreamy know? Is it, have you-?"

"No," Meredith insisted, cutting her off. "No one knows. It's too soon."

"Mere…" Cristina started, and they both knew what was coming: It was too soon, it might happen again, it might be worse this time, it might never happen for real, it might have Alzheimer's, it wasn't the right time; it was… still what she wanted.

"I know," Meredith agreed, and she did. She had to tell him, and they had to agree about the genetic tests, and they had to pick names, and they had to think about a nursery, and about how they'd manage with their careers, and they had to start thinking about car seats and college, and they'd have to think… they'd have to think positive, like he always said.

"Wow," Cristina muttered, surveying the crowd buzzing around them and taking another deep drink. "That tops my party," she added, smirking again.

"No drunks on fire poles," Meredith corrected, fingering her glass as she watched Derek talk with someone she didn't quite recognize, but who she thought might be the Vice President of Something Boring. "Your party was more fun."

"Yeah, it was," Cristina agreed proudly.

"And you still can't borrow my baby," Meredith insisted, shaking her head and sipping her club soda again.

* * *

She wasn't much of a drinker, and it probably didn't mix well with that freaking vitamin cocktail she downed every morning, and she went from silly and giggly and hiccupping to drowsy and sappy in the time it took to get her from the car to their bed, and she was already basically asleep by the time he bundled a blanket around her, crawling into the other side of the bed as he glanced at the messages on his cell phone.

He'd have to return the one from Amber, tomorrow. He'd help her, he'd promised, because he owed her, and this was his second chance with her, his second chance with everything, really. He played her message back twice, reminding himself that he was being paranoid, that he needed to stop listening for signs, for any hints that she was losing her grip on what was real, for any hint that she would unravel like his mother had.

Closing his phone, he burrowed under the blankets, listening as April curled closely into him with a sleepy sigh. He brushed a few strands of hair through his fingers, another faint smile tugging at his lips as she closed her arms around him. It could make you crazy, he reminded himself, to think about stuff like that, like second chances; it was just dumb luck, a bit of dumb luck bobbing on a sea of shit happens.

She'd call it a miracle or something, he imagined, since he knew she still stopped by the big old church on Twentieth and Oak sometimes. He imagined that she still believed in some of that stuff, like sin and redemption, and maybe even in it all being part of some big plan – even if she couldn't quite forgive everything herself.

He'd never believed any of that stuff, not the way his mother did when she prayed from her Bible; he never would believe that, not when some random buckshot could be all the difference between last rites and second chances.

He glanced idly at the clock on his nightstand, instinctively pulling her closer when she stirred beside him; he imagined that his mother would be asleep now, and Amber would be dreaming about more teenage crap, about knights in shinning armor, and what she'd planned to do in college, and Aaron would be on the road somewhere, hustling to make a living; he imagined what it might be like, if the pills kept working this time, and Amber graduated, and Aaron stayed out of trouble, and if April might go with him sometime, maybe, to see the little white farm house on a dusty country road in Iowa.

Not that he believed in any of that religious crap, though, he reminded himself, and he was grateful she kept it to herself usually, and he wondered sometimes if that was an early sign of impending lunacy – believing in stuff like incense and candles and spirits and magic rosary beads – and he wondered sometimes if his mother still prayed for him, to the patron saint of lost causes, and how that even worked – prayers for heathens.

* * *

"Still no names?" Cristina asked a month later, leaning against the Nurses station as she scribbled furiously onto a patient's chart.

"Have you considered Thomas?" a cheery, young nurse asked, looking up from her desk as if she was part of their conversation.

Meredith just rolled her eyes. They all did that, ever since the news had spread that she'd be having a baby. Everyone – nurses, patients, janitors – felt free to weigh in with advice, on teething and cribs and day care and computer training for toddlers, with suggestions - for names, and bed times, and infant toys, with questions and comments, as if she were some kind of hospital unity building project. It was driving her mad.

"It's a girl," Cristina corrected, shaking her head without looking up.

"I'll believe that when I see it," Alex grumbled, rooting through the folders behind the desk, and still holding out rapidly fading hope for it to be a boy.

"You won't see it," Cristina snickered, emphasizing the "it." "That's how the ultrasound tech figured out it was a girl."

"I'll be happy if the baby's healthy," Meredith reminded them, rolling her eyes as she moved on to up date her next chart.

"That's average," Cristina said, scowling. "Who wants an average baby? If I had a baby," she insisted smugly, "I'd expect it to be extra-ordinary, top of the line."

"Or you'd return it?" Alex taunted, laughing at her.

"You'd handle that part, right?" Cristina snickered, "since you work for the stork and all."

"I thought he was the Stork?" Meredith asked, looking up abruptly. She was desperately trying to avoid getting dragged into this conversation, but she just couldn't help herself, even though she was rage-y and hormonal, and they were Alex and Cristina, and it was the definition of insanity to engage them when they were bickering like this.

"He got demoted," Cristina retorted, sliding the chart back into its slot as she raced off to answer a page.

"Lily's pretty," Alex mused idly, still scribbling on the chart beneath his hands.

"Is that the name you picked in the pool I'm not supposed to know about?" she teased, frowning at him.

"No," he said flatly, shaking his head. "She's a six year old in for a bowel obstruction."

"Oh," Meredith teased. "Does she have a crush on you?" It was a running joke among the nurses in peads, and it drove him crazy, and she just couldn't resist.

"Aren't you supposed to be puking or something?" he growled, frowning again.

"No morning sickness," she reminded him smugly. "No high blood pressure. No gestational diabetes. No split ends, either," she reported, giggling again as he raised his eyebrows at her.

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled. "You're an over-achieving pregnant chick. Whatever."

"She heard you," Meredith said suddenly, looking down abruptly. "Here," she said, grabbing his hand and placing it right above where the baby was kicking.

"Whoa," Alex said, his hand tentatively lingering where she'd placed it.

"Yes, that's dirty uncle Alex," Meredith noted, as if confirming to the baby something she'd told her before, and laughing again when the baby kicked harder, as Alex glanced up at her wide eyed.

"She's telling you to shut up," Meredith teased.

"Yeah," Alex grumbled, finally pulling his hand back. "It's a chick."

"Now you believe the ultrasound?" she teased, rolling her eyes at him.

"No," he huffed, grabbing another chart. "But she talks too much to be a guy," he added, flipping the binder open as he walked away.

"Don't listen to him," Meredith whispered, as she returned to her paper work. "He'll love you the second he meets you. He's a professional baby sitter, you know," she added, grinning mischievously as she reached for her pager.


	4. Chapter 4

The pills stopped working at 5 a.m. on a Wednesday in June, and he'd driven through two states before he remembered that April was in the car with him. She was wringing her hands and crinkling a map he didn't need and staring nervously out the window and it was either his family or his driving or his cryptic account of who was who or the blur of cows and corn breezing past but some or all of it had her freaking spooked.

He should have said no from the start, when she'd climbed insistently into the car, but he just added that to the list of things he'd regret later and kept speeding across the plains.

The house was a mess - the police report explained why fairly straight forwardly - and Aaron was already at the hospital and Amber had already left off for work, the tasseled hat from her graduation the week before still perched on the kitchen counter, atop a wrinkled program from the ceremony, and he just righted the chairs and shoved a pile of old newspapers out of the way and scanned the bottles upended on the kitchen table.

He pushed the piles of tablets together, poured them into a baggie, and they were at the psych facility within the hour. It was all the same, the cameras everywhere, the searches for belts and shoe laces and anything that might be a weapon, the babbling social workers and the psychiatrists who talked side effects and symptom management, and the vacant eyed patients, inmates really, drugged from one oblivion clear into another.

Aaron defers to him this time, because he's a doctor, and he's supposed to know what to do, and doctors are supposed to fix things – isn't that why he went away to Seattle, and why he went to med school, and why he left them behind – and the list of drugs blurs in front of him and all the voices merge into a maddening, deafening hum and, really, he remembers having this much trouble breathing only twice before, once when he cracked two ribs in a wrestling match, once when a stranger put a slug through his chest.

He sees her later, sits beside her, and he recognizes this phase, too: the stupor that will finally quiet the voices and the restraints that will keep her from being a danger to herself or anyone else and the tag on her hospital bracelet reminding everyone to address her by name often, so she'll remember who she is. He wonders vaguely if that's the best thing for her, all things considered, for her to remember who she is.

They stay for three days, and he calms Amber down, and evades her questions – because there is no cure and the best their mother would ever be is probably behind her and this may be all they have left - visits governed by burly orderlies and shoes with no laces and vacant stares, by shaking hands and trembling legs – and the best case scenario just isn't all that far from the worst no matter how many pills they stuff into her.

He catches April staring at him, at him and at Aaron and at Amber, and he wonders what they've told her about him – that he beat up their dad, that he ran out on them, that he landed in juvie – and it should probably matter but it doesn't and it was all her fault for coming and the crappy white farm house grows cramped and claustrophobic and heated and Amber still stares at him, with questions he can't answer, and Aaron still looks at him like he's just another guy who abandoned them and there's always something you can do – he'd told himself that – but nobody can convey that to the voices in his mothers head, and hallucinations – he's leaned this from bitter experience, too – never fight fair.

He glares back, almost daring her to say anything – about how Amber should have been in science fairs and a choir, and Aaron shouldn't have dropped out of high school, and his mother shouldn't live in a house with a rotting front porch and peeling wall paper, and that he should do something about all of it, about the psych meds that don't work and the sister who can't afford to go to school full time and the brother who still doesn't have health insurance and the house that is one big gust away from toppling in the wind.

The ride home is dead silence, spanning across fields and mountains and bridges, and his rage ricochets around the car like buckshot and he goes for a run the moment they pull into the driveway, though its nearly 11 p.m., and he's driven the whole way, and he stays out until nearly 3 a.m., until the chill damp drives him inside.

He tries to wash it all off in the shower, the dirt and the guilt, the sweat and the fear, the grime and the panic, the stench from the car and the anger, the dust and the chaos, and the shoulds and the shouldn'ts, the cant's and the didn'ts, all wage war in his brain and he's struggling to breathe again and he wonders vaguely if the shower's drowning him.

He brushes his teeth, shrouded in steam, and he doesn't catch a glimpse of her through the fog until her arms are around him. He moves to push her away but he's stiffening in her hands before he can even turn around and he's flat on the bath rug before he can pull away and he's exploding within her before he can catch his breath again.

* * *

He's groaning deeply as her hands follow her lips and quieter moans follow as she pulls him closer, as he lingers inside, and he's snoring softly by the time she pulls two thick bath towels down around them, and she just rolls her eyes as she settles in closer to her, sure that she'll be sleeping on the bathroom floor again that night.

It was all his fault, since he usually dozed off afterwards, and it was all his fault, that she never had the heart to wake him until morning, even if they ended up under a big pile of towels for the evening, and it was all his fault, because his family was nothing like hers, nothing like she could even put into words, and it was all his fault, because despite the rage that emanated from him, she got it, really: how the bathroom floor in a friend's house could become the closest thing he had to a home.

It was still all his fault over the next month, too, as silence continued to echo through the house, and it was all his fault, that she stepped up her steam cleaning and bought bigger towels, and it was all his fault that she now knew much more about schizophrenia and community colleges in Iowa then she ever imagined she would, and it was all his fault that she decided that they needed to get away for a few days.

It was all his fault, even if it had been her idea: A short trip around late July, just to celebrate surviving another year of residency, or maybe just another week of back to back to back sixteen hour shifts, before they started their even more grueling fellowships.

It started simply enough: A few web sites, a travel agency, a curious frown, a shocked glance, a mischievous giggle, her idea of a bad joke.

She'd called him to her computer, had him eagerly glancing over her shoulder as she paged through the web sites of a few clothing optional resorts along the California coast. He called her bluff, smirking demonically as he reached around her and hit "purchase" while she watched horrified, as the reservation codes popped into her e-mail account.

It was all his fault, she decided weeks later, as she hunkered down under her huge beach towel and her magazines, glancing hesitantly up every now and then, as more body parts then she'd seen since med school paraded past. It was all his fault, she insisted, glaring at him as he dozed peacefully on the blanket beside her, his head resting on his arms.

It would serve him right, she insisted, peeking up at the sun, to get his ass fried; it'd serve him right, she insisted ten minutes later, clutching her towel awkwardly around her as she yanked a bottle of sun screen from her bag and warmed it in her hands. It'd serve him right, she fumed, rolling her eyes impatiently at the murmuring, sleepy smile that teased his lips, as she coated him in coconut scented lotion with aloe moisturizers. It'd serve him right, she grumbled, repositioning the beach umbrella to shield them from the sun.

She scrambled back under her towel again, then, clutching her magazines closer to her chest, sure they were all watching her: the brazen nudist volley ball players, the rowdy swimmers and the absent minded shell collectors, the kids fiddling with i-pods and the teens toting footballs and blow up rafts and the chatty toddlers with bright plastic buckets and shovels, the shameless older couple working out their crossword puzzle, wearing only wide brimmed sun hats, the sleepers and the trashy novel readers – well, okay, it was a biography of Lincoln, still - the popsicle eaters and the sand castle builders.

It was all his fault, she insisted, glancing sheepishly back to her articles; it was all his fault, she fumed, peeking up quickly again to glimpse a stacked, leggy blonde with a golden perfect tan, everywhere, running her eyes over him as she sauntered passed, a suspicious smile teasing her lips; it was all his fault, April grumbled again moments later, tossing a spare towel over him as he snored softly beside her, because the last thing she needed to listen to on the long drive home was him complaining about a sun burned ass.

* * *

"This is weird," Cristina announced bluntly, scrubbing out beside Alex as she eyed the clock. "Mere's a mother," she said incredulously. "That's weird, right?"

"Didn't the pregnancy thing kind of tip you off to that before?" he scowled, drying his hands.

"I don't mean that," she snapped, nervously soaping her hands again, though they were already perfectly clean. "I mean… how does that happen?"

"For real?" he snickered. "Hunt hasn't figured that out yet?"

"We're not trying," she snapped sarcastically, ripping a few paper towels from the dispenser, and leaning back against the wall. "He wants us to," she added quietly, picking at her fingers.

"So," Alex shrugged, scowling and drying his hands. "You still waiting for him to bail?

"No," she insisted, staring at the floor as she crossed her arms over her chest. "He loves me," she said flatly.

"Sucks for him," Alex replied, shrugging and following her out the door.

"Because all chicks are crazy?" she snickered, pushing the elevator button.

"If he wants a kid and you don't," Alex corrected, eying the elevator display.

Cristina nodded, glancing curiously at him as they entered the car.

"Well, April wants kids, right? I mean, you're the stork. She's dating the stork. She must want kids, right?" she asked.

"Never said anything," Alex shrugged. "Shouldn't you talk to Mere about this?" he noted, scowling again.

"She's all pregnant and hormonal," Cristina grimaced, shaking her head.

"Yeah," Alex agreed, shaking his head, wide eyed.

"I don't want to be all crazy and hormonal," Cristina announced firmly. "I don't want to be covered in spit up and picking up toys all over the place-"

"You're already a slob," Alex pointed out.

"I don't want to heat up strained beets," she continued, scowling incredulously.

"Hunt cooks for you," he pointed out. "You'd starve otherwise."

"I don't want to read stupid little storybooks about insipid little cartoon characters," she insisted, shaking her head again as they exited the elevator.

"Your kid would have flashcards and textbooks in its crib," Alex grumbled, scanning the patient roster for Mere's room number.

"I hate stuffed animals," she added, following him down the hall.

"Your kid would dissect them, anyway," he pointed out, scanning the room numbers. "She must have had it already," Alex noted, glancing back down at his watch and tracing the long hallway to the nursery.

"I hate Halloween," she added. "Begging for candy from strangers? No way."

"Your kid would steal the other kids' candy," he pointed out, the idea of a nice plate of French fries popping into his head as they walked over to the glass. "There she is," he said, smirking slightly as he spied Meredith by one of the bassinets.

"Wow," Cristina said, freezing near the glass as she watched Mere lean over the infant.

"Yeah," Alex agreed, smirking again.

"I could never do that," Cristina whispered, shaking her head.

"Dude," Alex smirked, shaking his head. "You operated at gun point, you can handle a baby. Let's go meet her," he added, pushing through the door.

"Hey," Meredith said quietly, glancing up briefly as she reached back into the bassinet. "Isn't she perfect?"

"Yeah," Cristina whispered, hovering behind Alex and peeking over his shoulder.

"No split ends?" Alex taunted. "He must be good, the stork," he added smugly, poking his own finger in to stroke the bay's hand.

"I thought you didn't like kids?" Meredith teased, eying Alex more closely, as another hint of a smile danced across his lips.

"I don't," he grumbled, pulling his hand back abruptly.

"Me, either," Cristina agreed sternly, crossing her hands over her chest.

"Carly," Meredith said softly to the infant, "that's your crazy aunt Cristina and your dirty uncle Alex. You'll just have to get used to them, like I did," she added, sighing dramatically and suppressing a giggle, while they both frowned back at her.

* * *

"That's for Meredith?" Cristina asked, peering skeptically at the bulky gift bag April had hastily set on the locker room bench, as she hurriedly shrugged off her coat.

"It's for Carly," she said happily, briskly grabbing her lab coat and her stethoscope. "Meredith's stopping by for lunch later this week. So I thought I'd bring it for her."

"You know it's still September, right?" Cristina asked, raising her eyebrows at her.

"I know," April nodded, shoving the bag in her cubby and following Cristina to the door. "But the best one's go early."

"You know the kid will only be like, two months old?" Cristina prodded.

"Of course," April smiled happily. "It's her first Halloween. Meredith must be so excited for her."

"Mere's not much for holidays," Cristina reminded her, sizing up the surgical board in search of their assignments. "You've met her, right?" she added sarcastically.

"It's different once you have kids," April insisted, shaking her head and searching for her own name on the board. "My mom really got into it," she added enthusiastically, "once she started making our costumes, and decorating our house."

"Maybe it was genetic," Cristina muttered, rolling her eyes as she pictured Mere's old house, now probably buried under an army of purple plush spiders and motion activated Franksteins and lacy rope cob webs – not that the candy stash wasn't good.

"I bet Owen dresses up again this year," April added happily, moving to the Nurses' station to retrieve a patient chart. "He showed me his costume last year. It was awesome."

"For a ten year old," Cristina grumbled, scowling.

"It's fun," April shrugged, "dressing up. You get to be someone else for a few hours, something else - anything you want."

"You mean like a… surgeon?" Cristina taunted, motioning to her lab coat.

"Well, I think its fun," April insisted frowning at her. "Maybe you'll feel different when you guys have your own kids."

"What?" Cristina demanded, turning back to her quickly. "What else did Owen tell you?"

"Nothing," April said quickly, looking at her like she was slightly mad. "I just figured, when you guys have kids, he'll probably get into it like my mom did. And then you'll-"

"What makes you think I want kids?" Cristina scoffed.

"Nothing," April shrugged. "I just figured, you're good with Carly. And Owen always fusses over her. I just… sorry," she grumbled, "forget it."

"He can get his own kid," Cristina grumbled.

"That's not really how it works," April noted reluctantly, cringing as she anticipated the inevitable virgin joke she was she was sure would follow.

"It'll have to be," Cristina complained, grabbing her own chart. ""I'm really not cut out for that."

"How do you know that?" April asked, as they walked down the hall.

"Have you met me?" Cristina asked sarcastically.

"That's something Alex would say," April giggled. "But he'll be a great dad. I mean… not that I think… not that I… I mean… someday… if he wants to be…"

"He works with them," Cristina pointed out. "By choice; I avoid them."

"Not Carly," April pointed out, pressing the elevator button she needed.

"That's different," Cristina insisted quietly.

"Wouldn't it be different if it was your baby, too?" April asked, trailing her off the elevator.

"My kid would be smarter," Cristina blurted, so quickly she earned a double take from April. "I mean, I'd start teaching her things from day one, you know, basic anatomy, maybe another language, she'd be bilingual… definitely bilingual. I mean, not that Mere's a bad mother or anything" she added quickly.

"Meredith's a great mom," April laughed, stopping by a patient room and reaching for the door handle. "I think you would be too… if you wanted to be," she said quietly, shrugging lightly as she entered the room.

"Yeah," Cristina whispered, shaking her head as she continued down the hall. "I think maybe I could be, too," she muttered to herself.

* * *

"It's a… pumpkin one-sie?" Meredith asked, studying her daughter as Alex handed her back to her, along with a matching cardboard pumpkin shaped gift sack.

"She went trick or treating," Alex grumbled, rolling his eyes as he handed her April's gift.

"For a rattle and baby powder?" Meredith asked, poking delicately through the bag.

"They don't make Strained Snickers Bars," Alex pointed out, shrugging as he dug into his lunch.

"You know your girl friend's crazy, right?" Cristina asked, grabbing some fries from his plate.

"All chicks are crazy," he retorted, smirking as the baby grabbed his sleeve.

"Don't listen to him," Meredith told her daughter. "That's dirty uncle Alex, remember," she cooed, smirking as the baby giggled.

"She loves me," he insisted, shaking his head and slurping his soda.

"Because all chicks love you?" Cristina snickered, sarcastically emphasizing the all.

"We must be crazy," Meredith teased, giggling again as he rolled his eyes. "And we have an appointment to get ready for," Meredith added, handing Carly back to Alex for a moment as she moved to stash the gift in her bag. "I'll call April later to thank her."

"Is she going crazy decorating the house again this year?" Cristina asked, rolling her eyes as she scooped up her yogurt.

"Spider paradise," he agreed. "But the candy's good," he added, shrugging.

"Owen's dressing up like a fireman with an ax through his head," she noted, rolling her eyes again.

"Kinky," Alex smirked.

"For the kids," she snorted sarcastically. "He likes to hand out candy. What's with these people?" she continued, grabbing some more of his fries as he just shrugged again.

"I think he's practicing for when we have ours," she added sarcastically. "And, no," she added, reaching for her pager and standing abruptly, cutting him off, "I'm not knocked up."

"So much for the fire pole," he taunted.

"You're just jealous," she taunted. "I get fire poles, you get spider happy virgins."

"Cristina," Meredith corrected, motioning toward Carly with her eyes. "Not in front of my daughter. Can you keep her for a minute," Meredith asked Alex quickly, holding up her soda cup. "I want to get a re-fill."

Alex nodded, rolling his eyes when she warmed him not to feed her any French fries.

"She's good, you know," Cristina said quietly, watching him tease Carly's fingers as he finished off his sandwich.

"For a baby," he shrugged, smirking at her as she smiled at them.

"I mean April," Cristina corrected, fingering her pager as she paused awkwardly. "I mean, the spider thing is weird," she scowled. "But… she's good," she added, walking away before he could say anything.

"What she'd say now?" Meredith teased, watching his expression as Cristina walked away.

"I think she said she likes April," he scowled, looking vaguely baffled.

"Really?" Meredith asked, fiddling with her cup. "That doesn't sound like Cristina," she added skeptically.

"She must be plotting something," he agreed, nodding to the baby as she giggled again.

"Maybe she's hormonal," Meredith shrugged, grabbing some of the fries from his plate.

* * *

It was already snowing when they arrived at the Dayton airport, and her parent's house was coated with glistening flakes by the time the cab dropped them off that afternoon, and she could see the fading pink and purple sunbeams dancing across the frozen pond, and the Christmas tree in the enormous bay window, and the red ribbon threaded through the wreath on the door, and she wondered what they'd say.

She'd told her mother the truth, this year, all of it; she told her the truth about Alex, too: that he wasn't much for traveling, or crowds; that his own family was…complicated; that he got grumpy and sarcastic when he was tired; that he sometimes seemed impatient when he was really just claustrophobic; that he wasn't religious; that she hadn't brought him home before because… he was…Alex… and they'd see why when they met him.

She'd told her mother the whole spiel, she'd almost rehearsed it, and she was vaguely nauseous as they trekked to the door, and she stepped sheepishly inside. She'd told her mother the whole spiel, but she wasn't sure what the woman had heard, because she embraced Alex anyway, somewhat to his dismay, even though she'd been warned, and she brought them into the living room, where coats were gathered and hot chocolate was distributed and her mother chattered about trees and sisters and work and dinner.

She'd told her mother the whole spiel, and a big platter of her signature chocolate chip cookies appeared anyway - minus the usual pecans - and April spotted the stocking with his name on it, hung neatly beside hers on the fire place, and she listened as her mother asked about peads and Iowa and his favorite pies and her father joined them later, as a big dinner gave way to a crackling fire and the guest room above the barn and he was already asleep when she peeked in on him, on her way to her old room down the hall.

It was the same as always, with the doll house her father had built her and her favorite books, and an old box of her school awards. The next day was like she remembered, too, like every other Christmas Eve, as aunts and uncles poured into the house, and plates and packages covered every surface and basketball games blared in the background and introductions were made and giggling commenced among her sisters and she heard about college and nieces and nephews and she got swept away in the crowd and spied him later, watching a football game with her dad and three of her uncles.

She grabbed his hand, grabbed their jackets, hustled him outside, and walked him down the path toward the pond, the pond where they always skated on Christmas day. It was clear and cold and a bare sliver of moon hung in the distance and she listened to the silence and the snow crunching under their feet and she spied a few deer watching shyly from behind one of the barns and she exhaled heavily, trying to catch her breath.

Slipping her gloved fingers through his, she continued to walk briskly, her near frozen breath billowing around her as the house glowed softly in the distance, surrounded by a halo of Christmas lights. She'd forgotten to mention that part to him, that her parents went a little crazy decorating for Christmas, too, and she imagined he was on the verge of a major freak out or a tantrum, or was already planning to bolt back to Seattle. She'd warned him about the separate bedrooms, and midnight mass, which would be in a few minutes, but the decorations, yeah, the decorations could be a bit much.

She could have given him a printed schedule, which would have looked just like this, and she could have told him that her family planned everything down to the last detail, and that holidays were all about family with them, and that she had to be here or they'd never forgive her, and that she wanted to be here, looked forward to being here every year – even if uncle Doug was too loud and aunt Mae was practically deaf and her cousin's wife told the same jokes over and over – and that she couldn't just leave him in Seattle with his Legos and his cup cakes and his cold pizza – with too much salt and too much MSG and not enough protein - even if he'd probably be happier there.

This all occurs to her as she circles around the pond, trudging heavily as he trails behind her, until they're back at the house steps, again, the porch spokes wrapped in red and white lights like cheerful candy canes, and she's sure that this is all alien and bewildering and ridiculous to him – and nothing like the little white farm house in Iowa - and she'd say something, anything, if she only she had some idea what.

But then the door swings open and a raucous mob spills down the steps and they're herded off to the church up the street and she passes familiar houses, all gaily decorated, and she recognizes a sea of familiar faces and she hears the same sermon again – about peace and joy and love and forgiveness – and she imagines him rolling his eyes as he sits stiffly in the wooden pew and she still wonders what Reed would think.

They're carried back to the house on the same raucous wave and the crowd disperses – to homes and local inns – and a light dusting of snow blankets their footsteps and she should still say something, anything, but he's asleep again when she peeks in on him, burrowed under a heavy plaid comforter, and she glances out of the large bay window of her old room, remembering when her sisters would wait and listen eagerly for Santa's sled, and ponder whether he remembered the instructions and the batteries for their new prized possessions and she wondered how things got so much more complicated, so quickly.

It was morning before she realized it, and her mother had already pressed Alex into service in the kitchen – despite April's explicit instructions – and she never remembered Aunt Edna's banana cream pie being on the breakfast menu before and she watched her mother pour him another glass of milk and squeeze his arm – despite explicit instructions about not touching him – and it was all a blur again as her sisters stirred to life.

She watched her mother fuss over him again, watched baffled as he unwrapped a DVD collection that shocked her and a sweat shirt she was sure he'd never wear and she laughed as he dug into his stocking – pulling out the licorice she'd mentioned once that he ate by the pound – and it was more basketball watching and ice skating and dinner again and another crackling fire and laughter and taunting and the general chaos she remembered from the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that.

She'd told her mother the whole spiel, but she was dragged to the mall the next day with her and her sisters, like always, while Alex toured the farm with her father, and tracked a rugged trail with him on the jet skis, and they watched another football game, agreeing by half time that the rest of the banana cream pie just couldn't go to waste.

She listened to her sisters chatter, about college classes and hair styles and leather boots – and Alex – and she smirked as they debated the color of his eyes, refraining to add that they changed shade with his mood – and she watched her mother scoop up a snowman ornament for the tree with his name on it, like the ones they all had – and she wondered what part of the spiel she'd left out, or if her mother had even been listening, as she'd laid out the guidelines and the reasonable expectations and the mysteries of all things Alex.

She told the woman the whole spiel, but she still wondered what her mother had heard, even three days later, as she watched her embrace him again as they left for the airport, and press another sack of licorice into his hands for the plane, and some cookies minus the pecans, and squeeze his arm gently as she whispered something into his ear, some thing that made him blush as a familiar, hesitant smile tugged at his lips.

She wondered as the cab pulled away from the house, how she'd ever explain what had just happened, and she wondered as they settled into their seats on the plane if he was secretly planning his escape, and she wondered as he sat beside her, happily gnawing on his licorice, why he'd decided to wear that new sweatshirt, and how she'd ever keep him safe from the crowds and the decorations – and her mother.

* * *

He receives the card on New Year's eve, with a short note from Amber and the grades from her first semester of college tucked inside; she got a 3.8 GPA, which Mere swears is better then she got her Freshman year, and which Yang says just proves he can't possibly be related to either of his siblings, and which Amber insists is her "just getting started."

Amber's smart and tough, he knows, she's a lot like Mere and Yang – crazy, true, but still, and Aaron works hard, and their mother's safe, and the bonus Alex earned for working extra holiday shifts in the Pit will cover three more classes, plus books, and she's already won another partial scholarship, and she still has a shot, to be someone she'll be proud of.

April reads the note while leaning over his shoulders in the locker room, and she chatters happily about maybe going to Iowa again this spring, while she volunteers to pick up more hats for Cristina and Owen's party that evening, and she beams back at him as she breezes through the locker room door, as if he'd gotten a 3.8, too.

The girls catch April's glance, too, and his ears tinge red as he stuffs the envelope abruptly back into his jacket, hanging it up as he retrieves his lab coat and his stethoscope, and Yang chortles about him being whipped, and Meredith giggles about how Carly likes peas, too, now, and he wonders as he follows them out into the hallway as they begin their early morning rounds, why the whole X chromosome doesn't come with a freaking warning label – something about it causing crazy – in everyone exposed.

* * *

She gets home early on News Years Eve. She'd planned to watch the ball drop, at least, at Cristina's party. But Alex had been summoned back to the hospital, and she hadn't wanted to stay without him, and it had started to snow again, and an ice storm was threatening for later, and she was relieved to be home, really, even if her sisters would tease her, again.

It must have been the fire place, though, because she dozed off soon after, and she didn't stir again until she heard the shower running upstairs. The clock in the hall read 1:20 a.m., but she imagined wryly that the New Year had arrived without her watching for it, and she scaled the stairs anyway, smirking as she pushed the bathroom door open.

Sliding up behind him at the sink, she snaked her arms around him with a giggle as her fingers dug into his warm flesh, a deep moan running through him until his knees finally buckled, and she tumbled to the floor with him. Cristina had been right about that part, too; it was always best to know how to make them shudder in your hands.

The insanely thick, fluffy bath mat had been a good idea, too, and he was groaning again by the time she straddled him and he was rippling against her as he slid smoothly into her and his arms locked around her as he thundered through her again and the steam from the shower had scarcely dissipated by the time he'd curled lazily around her.

She pulled him closer, rolling her eyes as she dragged two large bath towels down from the rack, and wrapping them around them, as he snored softly into her still tingling skin.

This wasn't part of the plan – lying awake while he slept peacefully on the bathroom floor again – that was never part of the plan- and she'd give him twenty minutes this time, thirty minutes tops, since she'd worked 16 hour shifts before, too, and the floor was spotlessly steam cleaned, as always.

Meredith had been right, April agreed. He wasn't exactly flowers, though he did bring home spring bulbs from Home Depot; and he wasn't exactly candy, though she'd always prefer ice cream, anyway, and he wasn't candles at all, unless she counted the electrical black out that past winter, when they ate leftover pizza and Chinese take out by fire and candle and flashlight, while listening to a basketball game on a battery powered radio.

She hadn't been looking for him in the first place, though, she reminded herself, shaking her head again as he drew closer into her with another soft sigh. She'd waited too long, she was sure, and she'd always be too scared of them: of their wants and their needs and the bewildering geometry of their bodies; she'd always be too scared to do anything but run, when they asked her to dance, or to talk, or to… to… to…

She'd been warned, too, by Meredith about being patient, by Cristina, about pecans, by a few chatty nurses, about the pretty blonde ex-wife; by her sisters, about prevention, by her mother, about guys in general; she'd been warned about everything, except how it would feel when he curled sleepily around her. They didn't startle her anymore, though, the lines and angles and curves of warm skin shimmering beneath her fingers, or the soft, contented murmurs, which almost made her blush red all over again, as she ran her hands gently along his body.

She'd be a virgin forever, Reed had told her, if she didn't stop reading those sappy romance novels, about princes and soul mates and knights in shining armor. She hadn't even told Reed the whole truth, though – that she'd already given up on all that stuff, and that she knew it only existed in books and journals, and that it was all she had left, since she was too scared of them, anyway, and it was too late for her.

She'd given up on believing in souls by then, too. But they'd never warned her that Meredith's house was haunted with them, or that she'd find one dripping and shivering on the bathroom floor, when she was just looking for aspirin. She'd never planned to find one curled up in her arms, either, sleeping peacefully amid bright yellow terry cloth, and it wasn't like she'd know how to return something like that, as if lost souls were listed in the newspaper classifieds along with the used snow blowers and the ads for free kittens, or even how to store it properly – even if all of her vitamin bottles were precisely organized, and all the cereal boxes were alphabetized.

Rolling her eyes again, she tugged him closer; she'd give him another hour, two tops, before rousing him and dragging him to bed. She'd have to be patient, Meredith told her: It would take him a very long time to trust her, and longer still for the "L" word to escape his lips. She'd appreciated the advice, but she'd already waited thirty years, and it wasn't like she was going anywhere.

Not going anywhere at all, she conceded with a smirk, reconciling herself to sleeping right there beside him, again. She watched the steam flutter, caught a flash from the corner of her eye, and pulled another huge towel down around him. It wasn't like Cristina or Meredith would walk in on them now, or even a busty blonde nudist with a perfect tan. But she still wondered about Reed, sometimes, and she tugged the towels more securely around them, because it might get chilly, once the shower steam dissipated, and then Reed might see them and snark on his ass, just like Cristina did.

She'd tell him the whole truth, someday, though: that she thought Reed had stayed in that elevator with him, and had watched over him - until she could get there herself. She'd tell him that, eventually; eventually, she reminded herself, but probably not just yet; probably not when he woke the next morning, since it still sounded a little odd, and he'd probably just think she was crazy.


End file.
